Czech Film Center

Synopsis

The story of Petr Zelenka’s movie The Karamazovs takes place in contemporary Poland. A group of actors from Prague, led by a play director, arrive in Krakow to present a theatrical adaptation of Dostoyevski’s novel The Brothers Karamazov at an alternative festival organized in the unconventional environment of a steel mill. The theatrical play, the plot of which evolves around a patricide investigation, tells the story of debaucher and
cynic Fyodor Karamazov and his four sons. The issues of faith, immortality, and the redemption of man present themselves as the powerful emotions of love, jealousy, and hatred play out on the makeshift stage of the dilapidated mill. Simultaneous with the rehearsal we observe story lines from the real world, of the cast, and of those who still work in this steel mill. Sometimes the effect is comic, but tragedy waits in the wings. A factory maintenance man learns during the rehearsal that his son, who is in the hospital due to an
accident at the mill, has died. The rehearsal continues at the man's request. Suddenly the biggest drama does not take place on stage but in the audience…