Empties

A deposit system was recently introduced with great fanfare in Poland, bringing with it an abundance of automated bottle-return machines. Meanwhile, Zdeněk and Jan Svěrák imagined a different solution two decades earlier: a small opening in the wall of a supermarket, where empty bottles are accepted by a live person—the hero of their film. Josef Tkaloun (Zdeněk Svěrák), an experienced teacher, ends his teaching career, but the vision of a peaceful retirement does not appeal to him. Active, full of ideas, he has no intention of giving in to idleness. To the growing dissatisfaction of his wife Eliška (Daniela Kolářová), he looks for something to do—and after several attempts finds work at a bottle-return counter in a small supermarket, where bottles meet bottles and people meet people. Of course, it is not in his nature to remain merely an observer of the events unfolding in this peculiar microcosm. “Dad wrote a grotesque—a kind of Don Quixote fighting a bottle-return machine. That wasn’t enough for me. I preferred it not to be a simple, comical story but something larger, bittersweet: a film about youth and old age, about long marriages, about the charms and shadows of life,” Jan recalled. A crisis followed and production was halted, but in the end everything worked out. The film won Czech Lions for directing, screenplay, and highest box-office attendance, as well as the award for Best Actor at the Black Nights Film Festival in Tallinn.

Maciej Gil

Jan Svěrák (b. 1965) – Czech director, screenwriter, and producer. Son of actor and screenwriter Zdeněk (born 1936), and father of editor František (born 1991) and actor Ondřej (born 2001). A graduate of the documentary film department at FAMU in Prague. He won a Student Academy Award for Oil Gobblers (1988) and an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film for Kolya (1996). He was also nominated for The Elementary School (1991) and received the Crystal Globe at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival for The Ride (1994), along with numerous Czech Lions and other awards. His films The Elementary School, Kolya, Dark Blue World (2001), and Empties (2007) rank among the biggest successes at the Czech box office. He has also appeared in cameo roles in films by his colleague Filip Renč.

Zdeněk Svěrák (b. 1936) – Czech actor, screenwriter, playwright, and author of numerous collections of short stories for children and adults (also published in Poland), as well as hundreds of song lyrics. Father of director, screenwriter, and producer Jan (born 1965), and grandfather of editor František (born 1991) and actor Ondřej (born 2001). Trained as a teacher of Czech language and literature. The recipient of countless awards, he has co-created films that won an Academy Award and received two further nominations. In 1967, he co-founded the Jára Cimrman Theatre, for which he wrote all the plays and where he continues to perform to this day. As a screenwriter, he has collaborated with some of the most prominent Czech directors, including Oldřich Lipský, Jiří Menzel, Vít Olmer, Ladislav Smoljak, and, of course, his son Jan. As an actor, he has appeared in films by the aforementioned directors as well as those by Věra Chytilová and Dušan Klein.

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