Retrospective 2019

Atentát

Assassination
Jiří Sequens
ČSSR 1965
100 min
V'19

One of occupied Prague’s greatest contributions to anti-Nazi resistance was undoubtedly Operation Anthropoid, the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in June 1942. Heydrich was a high-ranking SS official and one of the main architects of the Holocaust. He was sent to Prague to suppress the local resistance in the territories of Bohemia and Moravia, but was instead assassinated by a squad of Czech paratroopers sent from the UK, where the legitimate Czechoslovak exile government was based. The Germans were brutal in their retaliation and search for perpetrators: cruel repressions followed, with several innocent people executed. While not strictly speaking a partisan film, since the armed resistance is only half-homegrown, ATENTÁT nevertheless excels at showing how Czechoslovakia fiercely opposed the Nazi occupation, and how the assassination of Heydrich could not have happened without courageous local support. With great directorial flair and in glorious anamorphic widescreen, Jiří Sequens strived for a historically accurate reconstruction of events and allegedly succeeded to a large degree, even if that meant that the brave soldiers who carried out the assassination are not presented only as heroic symbols, but also as real people with real fears.

With an introduction by Michal Bregant.

Credits
  • Radoslav Brzobohatý
  • Rudolf Jelínek
  • Luděk Munzar
  • Ladislav Mrkvička
  • Jiří Kodet
  • Josef Vinklář
  • Miloslav Fábera
  • Kamil Pixa
  • Jiří Sequens
  • Rudolf Miličd
  • Jan Chaloupek
  • Miloš Vacek
Filmové továrny AB na Barrandově
35 mm
SW
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