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EARTHLY PARADISE

RAJ NA ZEMI

By Jaro VOJTEK

MPHILMS - as PROD

True Story - Production 2017

Earthly Paradise is topography of individual and global struggles – continual therapy without the end.

- Year of production
- 2017
- Genres
- True Story, Biography, Documentary
- Countries
- SLOVAKIA
- Languages
- SLOVAKIAN, ENGLISH, SERBIAN
- Budget
- 0 - 0.3 M$
- Duration
- 90 mn
- Director(s)
- Jaro VOJTEK
- Writer(s)
- Marek LEŠČÁK
- Cast
- Andrej BÁN
- Producer(s)
- Mátyás PRIKLER (MPHILMS), Zora JAUROVÁ (MPHILMS)
- Synopsis
- Earthly Paradise is a documentary film project that has emerged from long-term professional collaboration and personal friendship of film director Jaro Vojtek and journalist and war photographer Andrej Ban. Andrej professionally follows painful conflicts in the world for many years as a reporter and his work has been awarded by several prizes and awards. However, Jaro as his friend has been often a silent witness of his personal struggles, felt-apart relationships, psychological problems and fighting with depressions. In order to help him, Jaro started to record their conversations, or better Andrej’s confessions and this personal psychotherapy have laid the foundation to the concept of the film. The main line of the film consists of Andrej’s travels to crisis destination, where Jaro follows him (Kosovo, Georgia, Turkey, Iraq…), his camera observing his interaction with people in need and his photographic work. This is altered by glimpses of his personal life, struggles with relationships, love, looking for home and safe place. In fact, this way of approaching the documentary reality is typical for Jaro Vojtek’s directing. He belongs to well-established Slovak documentary film directors; his films (My zdes, Hranica/Border, Tak ďaleko, tak blízko/So far, so near and many others) have been awarded by critiques and audiences in Slovakia and abroad. In 2014 MPhilms produced hid first feature film Deti / Children which has won many awards (including 3 Tian-tan Awards in Beijing IFF). However, his focus remains on introspective documentary recording of humane fates. Earthly Paradise is an essence of what he masters at best – to become a documenting partner and a friend of protagonist and his fate, be always present, more as a therapist than a partner in the dialogue.This personal story develops in the strong political context – terrible records and pictures of refugee crisis in Europe, war zones and political conflicts are seen by eyes of a war reporter but also through camera of documentary director, which brings entirely new view of those situations. Reflection of both – individual and humankind fate in one documentary creates intensive memento of contemporary world’ tragedies and pains, we are not able to cure or prevent, so we can only live them. The result is the film with appealing universal message – a broken person trying to reflect, understand and fix the problems of a broken world, finding a home, safety and peace – an Earthly Paradise.