»Daleka cesta« (The distant journey) on Mar 4 within Czech Film Wednesday
23.02.2026
At Czech Film Wednesday on March 4, we will be showing the 1949 film "Daleká cesta."
The film traces the journey of Prague’s Jewish community to the German extermination camps through the story of the Kaufmann family. Their daughter, Hana, is a doctor and is married to her non-Jewish colleague, Dr. Antonín Bureš. However, their marriage does not prevent Hana’s parents from being deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. When Antonín sneaks into the camp, he not only witnesses the degrading living conditions but also learns that his in-laws have already been “transferred” to the East—to Auschwitz, Majdanek, or Sobibor...
Director Alfréd Radok was himself interned in a labor camp and lost close relatives in the concentration camps. Constantly interrupted by documentary film footage that links individual fates to contemporary history, the dramatic scenes coalesce into a nightmarish, expressionistic “dance of death.”
Daleká cesta disappeared from Czech cinemas in 1949 after just a few screenings and was not shown again until 1991. The film was digitally restored in 2019 and screened at the Berlinale in 2020.