Over the course of a 40-year career making documentaries that shook the Czech Republic – but have gone largely unnoticed outside her native country – film-maker Helena Třeštíková has set one international record that is hard to dispute: she is likely to be the only director in world cinema who was robbed by her own protagonist.
In 1992, while working on one of her trademark long-term “time-lapse documentaries” about juvenile delinquent René Plášil, she had to travel to Germany for work and packed off her husband and their two children to the countryside for the weekend. René somehow got wind of the apartment being empty, broke down the triple-locked door and made off with all the electrical hardware, some antique furniture and the kids’ piggy banks.
