Lost in Munich

Spectacular! The best Czech movie in recent years. An excellent comedy(?) extending beyond the limits of the genre, unparalleled in contemporary Czech cinema. After a weird trailer, I decided to give it a miss at the cinema, but I regret it all the more now, because I enjoyed literally every minute of it. A clear five stars and a completely new perspective concerning the events of 1938 for me. I recommend not reading up on the movie in advance. All the surprising twists only intensified my experience. (20/03/2016)

A film about why something doesn't work, which thematizes that we actually do our best work when we pretend that we are not good at it, and during this it is so perfectly buck-passing and artificial that it resembles a parrot who just repeats what others tell him. A potentially interesting concept walled up by inconsistency. While the Year of the Devil was quite an interesting "mocumentary", the second half of Lost in Munich feels like a very lame defense of why the former doesn't make sense. And since Zelenka alternates between documentary shots with purely film footage and continuously flat music, the result of the defense is as sparse as the acted part. Meta-weaklings from the nineties. A mental ghetto of an eternal revision of a national stereotype that affirms itself with love and that is why it survives, even if someone seems to parody it. Long overdue and still boring as fuck. Let’s turn the page. (24/04/2017)

Petr Zelenka is very specific and a very good author. This isn't just playing with history; this is playing with film, playing with the audience who isn't sure what they're actually watching. And you won't experience this twist just once, but rather several times. Despite the form, the idea here doesn't get lost, which is very intriguing and one that I could easily believe in. And all of this with a peculiar sense of humor. (10/02/2017)

It’s a level better Polski film, this time in a version with French, Munich, and the very beautiful Prague. While I personally don't find it necessary for films like this to be made, I would leave it to the next generation to evaluate them, because I understand that if you fall in love with Day for Night, then you have to act. (20/06/2016)

I feel sorry that I missed this movie when it was screening in cinemas. In Mladá Boleslav it was in cinemas maybe even less than one week and then they changed it either for some cartoon cash cow or another one of the endless line of American superhero movies… But a good Czech movie is hard to find in cinemas. And Lost in Munich is exactly that. Petr Zelenka took advantage of the audience and really toys with them from the start to the finish. What you watch as a film for an hour changed into a film about a film in the next hour. Plus you are following the connections and it all starts to make sense only toward the ending. And it is really funny and entertaining. And the cast is amazing as well – Martin Myšička, Tomáš Bambušek or Jana Plodková. And the fundamental premise of Munich and the brave proposition that the Munich Agreement actually helped us is all that is needed to make even a viewer with the knowledge of history excited. The absolute uniqueness of it all is not worth five stars but still it is one of the most interesting Czech films. (04/04/2016)