Petr Kazda

Czech Republic's own cinematic gem, Petr Kazda was born in 1978 in Ostrava, an industrial city known for its gritty charm. Active from the early 2000s, Kazda primarily worked within the realms of drama and biographical films, with his most renowned work being "I, Olga Hepnarova” from 2016, a chilling yet compelling portrait of a young woman who committed a mass murder in Prague in 1973, which won an award at the Berlin Film Festival. His directorial style is marked by a profound sense of empathy for the outsider, combined with a stark, black-and-white cinematography that perfectly captures the bleakness of his characters' lives. In Kazda's hands, the lens becomes an empathetic eye, revealing the raw, uncensored truths about humanity that most of us would rather look away from.