Czechoslovakia 1948
Director: Alfred Rarok. Screenplay: Mojmor Drvota, Erik Kolar, Alfred Radok. Director of photography: Josef Strecha. Music: Jiri Sternwald.
Cast: Blanka Waleská, Otomar Krejča st., Viktor Očásek, Zdeňka Baldová, Eduard Kohout, J. O. Martin, Josef Chvalina, Anna Vaňková, Jiří Plachý st., Saša Rašilov st.
The film traces the path of Czech Jews to Germany’s extermination camps, using the fictional narrative of the Kaufmann family from Prague. The daughter, Hana, is a doctor. After the Nazis occupy Czechoslovakia, she marries her gentile colleague Dr Antonín Bureš. But the marriage does not save Hana’s parents from being deported to Theresienstadt. When Antonín secretly infiltrates the camp, he is forced to confront not only the degrading conditions there, but also that his in-laws have already been “sent east”, meaning to Auschwitz, Majdanek, or Sobibor … Director Alfréd Radok was himself interned in a work camp and lost close relatives to the concentration camps. With Daleká cesta, he created an artistically effectual portrayal of the horrors of the Holocaust. The narrative is continually interrupted by documentary footage, linking the fate of the individuals to contemporary history, and concentrating the narrative segments into a nightmarish, expressionist danse macabre. Daleká cesta disappeared from Czech cinemas shortly after its release in 1949 and was not shown again until 1991.