Milos Forman: What Doesn’t Kill You

Before 1989, Jaromil Jireš made a film about Miloš Forman for a German audience, and Věra Chytilová for a Belgian one. After the Velvet Revolution, the first Czech documentary finally emerged, Hold On to the Dream, directed by M. Šmídmajer. It captured Miloš Forman during his bicycle journey from Paris to the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, with the bicycle ride serving as a symbolic motif for the twists and turns of his life and creative work. In the fifteen years since, significant changes have taken place in Forman's life, and his professional career has gone through its own turns and vicissitudes. Miloslav Šmídmajer has therefore returned to this endlessly compelling and inspiring subject, to capture the current life and thinking of this great personality, and, drawing on their personal relationship and connection, to open up some of the intimate corners of Forman's life that became inspiration for his filmmaking and that resonate, with extraordinary depth and unexpected resonance, throughout his films.