Czech Film Center

Synopsis

“For someone, it’s Gott, for another, it’s Satan. I put sugar in my coffee. Each has his own truths, even the crystalline rock in the Krušné Hory mountains. The buzzard snatched the young hare and the spider lies in wait for the fly. Bulls will end up in the goulash. The sportsman wants to win, the horse wants to win, wine-growers want to win, and President Klaus wants to win. I’ll tell on the birds in the heavens, but the energy industry must always remain a serious issue. You let someone into your home, you don’t even know who they are, and they cause you harm. The devil manipulates people, but crystalline rock is everlasting.” God’s Stone Quarry is similar in form to Rychlík’s older film, One Year, which focused on people long settled in the Horňácko region straddling the Moravian-Slovak border. At first sight, the interconnectedness of the Carpathian highlanders’ lifestyle, culture, and economy with their environs, their respect for nature and the natural and divine orders of the world vastly differ from the lives of the people inhabiting Northern Bohemia’s “lunar” landscape. But human dreams and desires are ever the same, even in a region which seems to have been written off. The film takes on the search for happiness in a hapless land.