1982 Franco-German film directed by Gabi Kubach

Bernhard works as a warehouse clerk in Munich. After being sentenced to probation for a physical altercation with a right-wing extremist, he could no longer continue his engineering studies. Bernhard meets Johanna. She comes from a well-to-do family; her father is a real-estate developer and her brother is in the diplomatic service. Bernhard wants to share his roots with her, so the two go to Prague, where he lived until the end of the war. But her father disapproves of the trip to the Eastern bloc. When Bernhard finds out that he owes his chance to develop new technology, which led to his career advancement, to his girlfriend’s father, he is upset …

Vašek learns that he is dying, so he steals a painting and goes to Rome to sell it – he needs money for a healer. Sitting on a train with a fake mustache on his face, he has no idea that he has, in fact, been sent on a spiritual quest of his life by a beautiful girl. His pursuers look as if they were transported from a 1970’s movie, yet his attention is constantly drawn to the other passengers, who pull him into their own stories with no mercy. Vašek slowly gets lost in a colorful chaos of other people’s destinies, opinions and his own dreams. In the end, his train will take some of them to hell, others to enlightenment or a bizarre epiphany. The film takes a humorous view on all the basic philosophical questions we have heard so many times but that we have yet to find the answers to.

Eleven disparate adolescents, gathered for a skiing camp at an isolated winter resort, find themselves preyed upon and set against one another by their three mysterious instructors.

Jan Poutnik (Vladimir Pucholt) was born in Czechoslovakia but has emigrated to the United States, where he teaches film courses at a New York college. Pampeliska (Ingrid Timkova), a young widow from Jan's home town of Bystre, has come to America to visit, and has brought with her a pocket watch once owned by Jan's father, which she presents to him. Jan introduces Pampeliska to his close friend Adam (Adam Davidson), and soon Adam finds himself falling in love with the widow, while Jan finds his mind filled with thoughts of Bystre, some nostalgic and some poisoned by the horrors of war. In time, both Jan and Adam pay a visit to the Czech Republic, though their reactions are very different. The original Czech title of Navrat ztraceneho raje / Which Side Eden translates roughly into English as Return of Paradise Lost. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
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