Czech statesman Karel Schwarzenberg, who was chancellor under Václav Havel and a former foreign minister, known to many people in the Czech Republic as “The Prince”, is the subject of the intimate portrait My Father, the Prince [+lee también:
entrevista: Lukas Sturm y Lila Schwarz…
ficha de la película], which will premiere at the upcoming edition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (1-9 July – see the news). However, Schwarzenberg’s life is looked upon through the lens of his daughter, Lila Schwarzenberg, who co-wrote and co-directed the film with Lukas Sturm, and this fact explains the film’s subtitle: “A daughter’s perspective”. Furthermore, Lila Schwarzenberg does not remain solely behind the camera, but also appears in front of it when engaging in a conversation with her father on the record.

(El artículo continúa más abajo - Inf. publicitaria)

The film was shot over the course of five years in Prague and at Orlik Castle in South Bohemia, but also in Vienna and Murau, Styria. The interviews between Karel Schwarzenberg and his daughter explore their shared history, and his life as a statesman, aristocrat and politician in the second half of the 20^th century. In addition, they home in on the life of Lila, who defied etiquette and aristocratic preconceptions, and how she attempted to overcome the distance separating her from her father. The underlying leitmotif of the documentary is a relationship between parents and offspring, and “their mutual, often doomed desire for recognition, appreciation and closeness”.

“I intended to make a film about my father, documenting his thoughts, his incredible knowledge, his life on the political stage of Europe and, of course, his memories of a childhood in a long-lost world,” says co-director Lila Schwarzenberg. “But the longer I went on this journey with my father, the longer I accompanied him and interviewed him, the more it also became a film about me, about us, the attempt to understand my father in all his complexity and to be understood by him. I hope that, at its core, it resonates as an intimate and emotional document about a daughter and her father, their common strengths and weaknesses, failures and dreams, and their strangeness and closeness in dealing with each other.”

In addition to interviews, the documentary includes family photos and private film footage. Monika Willi (The White Ribbon [+lee también:
crítica
tráiler
entrevista: Michael Haneke
ficha de la película], Amour [+lee también:
crítica
tráiler
entrevista: Michael Haneke
ficha de la película]) and Thomas Vondrak served as editors, with Christoph Beck, Duli Diemansberger, Mike Fried, Stefan Haselgruber, Nino Leitner, Matthias Meissl, Rosanna Stark, Christian Stolz and Richard Wagner lensing the picture.

My Father, the Prince is an Austrian-Czech co-production produced by Sabotage Films, and co-produced by Neulandfilm & Medien GmbH and Thought Engine. The film was supported by the Austrian Film Institute. Bontonfilm will handle the theatrical release in the Czech territory.