Through This Night

The film portrays the final days of the most famous Czech authoress, Božena Nemcová, who in the mid-19th century dared to live a life free of social constraints. The novelist of the legendary "Grandmother", which Kafka still recommended for his sisters to read, sits down one evening in 1861, exhausted and deathly ill, on her last journey, which is also a final attempt to flee a broken marriage, and formulates in her desperation three draughts of a letter to Vojtech Náprstek, her last friend and patron, a letter which will never reach its intended recipient. These three draughts contain gaps and omissions, and yet they form a conclusive, self-contained portrayal of the way 19th century society revenged itself on a woman who dared to settle into a liberated life, and was doomed to fail. (Berlinale)