Adam Rybanský is a Czech filmmaker and screenwriter, born in 1994 in Hradec Králové. He studied film at the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts (FAMU), in Prague. He has since directed and written four films. His debut feature Somewhere over the Chemtrails, a satirical comedy about a small town is intoxicated with racism and puffy conspiracy theories, premiered in the Panorama section of the Berlinale in 2022.

This interview was conducted in December 2024 as part of ArteKino 2024. Somewhere over the Chemtrails is available to watch online for free during the entire month – just click here for more information.

…

.

Susanne Gottlieb – This is your feature debut, and it premiered at the prestigious Berlinale, and it’s now been curated by ArteKino. Please tell us more about your experience and your sentiments during this film journey.

Adam Rybanský – First of all, the biggest success for us was that the film was realised and completed successfully, because it was not at all certain. The film was made for five years as my graduation film at FAMU, and unfortunately we repeatedly failed to get support from the state film fund. In the end, the producers decided to take the risk and shoot it anyway. We filmed due to some deadlines in the winter of 2021, when there were the strictest restrictions in the Czech Republic due to covid and it was not even possible to just leave the districts. We had to hope the whole time that no one would get covid during the filming, because it was no longer possible to postpone the filming. It was a hard winter and sometimes it was even -8°C and snowing, and we were filming a sunny Easter spring. All these difficulties and obstacles made it a film that might not have looked like this otherwise.

We managed to get it done and we didn’t have any bigger ambitions beforehand. Of course, we imagined some big festival, but we had no contacts. I knew from my previous student films that my style and humour resonated abroad and was therefore probably universal, so I believed it. And then it was a complete coincidence that the film was accepted to the very first festival it was submitted to, right into the Panorama section of the Berlinale. At that time we were just finishing grading and the sound mixing was still to come. We made it and didn’t understand how we got from the fountain in the village square of Chvalnov to the Zoo Cinema at the Berlinale. My greatest joy was that the audience felt the empathy with which I tried to approach the characters and the whole subject. The biggest advantage of the Berlinale was that it opened the way to a lot of other festivals, most of which I was able to go to in person and enjoyed the discussions with the local audience. I was surprised at how universal this local Czech film was in its subject matter, that even audiences from Indonesia told me how similar it was for them.

SG – Your film was inspired partially by the Czech terrorist Jaromír Baldas. Where are we at as a society, if we have to cook up terrorist acts to keep the hatred going?

AR – In 2017, Jaromír Balda cut down a tree on the railway tracks to cause a train accident and wrote the message “Allah is great!” on the felled tree. He has been called the first Czech terrorist by the media. I found this to be a fascinating situation that was right in the spirit of my absurd tragicomic plots. I was fascinated that someone who was so afraid of terrorists could commit a terrorist act to make a point. And the strongest emotion that inspired me was just that the neighbors said of Balda that he was a very nice and kind old man, and I wondered what drove him to do this out of desperation. And also the fact that populist extremist parties take advantage of this fear of the people, they incite it and then it can lead to such acts, which was the case in Balda’s case, because Balda had previously put up posters of that political party around the neighbourhood.

So from 2017 onwards I started writing this film and there’s very little of Balda in there, for me the bigger plot inspiration ended up being the fact that around 2015 there were a lot of terrorist attacks by vans driving into people in big European cities. I wondered what would happen if that happened in a village and what all that could cause. I was attracted to this absurd idea and at that moment I was clear that this was the kind of material I wanted to make my feature debut.

SG – Your story is rooted in a small Czech town, where some of the traditions like slapping the girls on Easter, might seem strange to outsiders. Yet, it feels you wanted to make this story as universal as possible?

AR – Yes, my films are stylised in a lot of things, but not in the way of life. I use stylisation in exaggerated situations, compositions, but not in the characters, the way of speaking and life itself. I try for realism in that, so that even if it feels like hyperbole to some people, it still feels genuine. So I make local Czech films from the environment that I know and live in, and I don’t think in any way about making it universal or understandable for a foreign audience. In my short student films, I’ve found that people from abroad understand my films because the themes that interest me are inherently universal, because I’m interested in the human being and the human being is everywhere the same in his core, his sadness, his joy.

And about the Easter slapping tradition, of course we thought that if there’s an Easter caroling, nobody else will understand it, but that’s the advantage, that sometimes you see something in films or in life that you don’t understand, but it interests you and you think about it. There’s no violence in it, but from another point-of-view it’s very strange, and I thought it was good to contrast it with the firemen who are policing and safety and when they see this they get relieved and smile. So this scene is probably more interesting in the end for those who don’t know anything about our tradition.

SG – Many of the inhabitants seem so authentic. Did you work with some non-professionals?

AR – Yes, I find it essential to have non-actors in my films because it adds to the truthfulness and liveliness for me. I originally wrote the character of Standa and Bróňa on the body of two specific non-actors from Home Sleep Home. Their real names are Standa and Bróňa. During the writing of the script, I decided to cast actors in the lead roles, because I was afraid they would lose their authenticity due to the difficulty of their roles. But most of the supporting roles and extras are non-actors and often residents of the village where we filmed. Even if you can sometimes tell the difference between an actor and a non-actor within a scene together, I still like it that way because there’s that authenticity and life.

SG – Your movie’s focus keeps switching back between Broňa and Standa as the moral focus. Which character was more fascinating and interesting for you to write?

AR – Definitely Standa, that’s the main character for me. Because he’s the one who doesn’t know what’s right, but he wants to do the best and most right thing. Standa is put between Jana and Bróňa and he’s caught up in the confusion of today’s information-filled times. What to believe, what to fear and what not to fear, especially when he is supposed to be a father and wants the best for his child and family. At the same time, he is also dealing with the personal dilemma of being a father and not being able to do anything manually or make anything and feeling immature. He grew up without a dad and his role model is Bróňa, who can build a house and can handle anything. For me, it’s also about the question of masculinity today.

SG – You also focus not only on the fear of an Arab terrorist but everyday racism like the one directed at the Roma Gejza. In your short film Friendly Sport Meeting [2017]m you also had a small town playing traditional sports and suddenly confronted with a Roma team. In Home Sleep Home [2018] you focused on two Czechs abroad and societal polarisation, racism, nationalism, and the rise of right-wing popularism. What is it about these tendencies, that you keep coming back to them?

AR – The themes of these two films and Somewhere over the Chemtrails are based on what I was dealing with most at the time – my dilemma that this everyday racism is all around us and often among our loved ones. I’m from a small town, and some of my friends or people that I know are the nicest and best dads from their families or some nice grandmother for example… and they can say such a strong racist remark meant in earnest, that this is what I’ve always wondered about. Being interested in it, pointing it out, but not judging it, because I come from that background and I know that nothing is black and white and that’s the way the world is, and I think that’s one of the most universal themes in my films as well. At festivals all over Europe, people have said to me, “I come from a small village in the mountains and I know exactly these situations and these people.” Often people from the city look down on them and judge them, but I don’t because I know them and I try to show that there are human destinies behind them and I hope that anyone who has seen Somewhere over the Chemtrails can understand Bróňa because he actually means well. I love all my characters and I hope you can feel that.

SG – You chose to tell the story as a tragicomedy, which is a very challenging discipline. What motivated you to go for the humour in this scenario, and what have your learnt from the experience?

AR – Yes, for me it’s a tragicomedy because I like when the tragic and the comic collide because I think that’s the most descriptive genre of life/being. There’s so much cruelty and injustice going on in the world, but also a lot of joy and beauty, and some of the absurdities of how things intersect are just tragicomic. I don’t deliberately think about humour, I don’t write to make the viewer laugh, I don’t calculate with humour, it’s just how I naturally see the world.

SG – How can we as people check and balance each other to prevent the radicalisation, that so easily befalls Standa?

AR – It will sound pathetic, but love is probably the only option along with education. Standa is a loving man and so is Bróňa in a way under his rough skin, but Bróňa is sad, bitter and frustrated, so he channels his goodness through hatred of strangers. Standa has the great advantage of having Jana with him, if Standa had been without Jana, who knows how things would have turned out for him. Anyway, only love, apart from education, can lead to understanding and belonging, that someone will not follow radical tendencies, because they are simply connected with love for one’s own people, but hatred for others.

SG – Should people trust what they read on the internet? What message is your film trying to get across to viewers?

AR – It is related to the radicalisation and polarisation of society. The internet and the times we live in today are certainly not conducive to that. When I wrote the script, it was a much more innocent time than what Covid and the war in Ukraine did to radicalisation and misinformation. It seems to me that the film is becoming more and more relevant in this regard, and I don’t see it as very optimistic for the future to be honest. In the longer term, it would be great if we could somehow manage to cling less to the over-information and the speed of time and be less internet people. But I think it’s only going to get worse and we’ll see when it breaks. Maybe it’s already broken.

SG – Please tell us about your future plans. Will you continue to focus on the topic of racism?

AR – Primarily no. I guess I’ll always have a bit of it there, but this time in my next film, Bohemian Paradise, which I’m developing, I’m focusing on love and relationships on the closest level, because it’s important for me to deal with what makes us happy and unhappy on that at the most intimate level, so now I am dealing with a partner relationship, in which I explore the paradox of a relationship, where the one we love most is also the one who can irritate us the most. This is a feeling everyone has likely faced in their relationships, making it a crucial subject to explore. But it will also be about the themes of society and changing behavior within society, I will always explore that in my films. But it’s primarily about the loss of marital understanding and finding a way back to each other metaphorically and literally, as the husband gets lost in the woods on a camping vacation and is looking for his family back.

…

.

Adam Rybanský is pictured at the top of this article. The other image is a still from Somewhere over the Chemtrails.