
Martha Issová
Bohdanka
The story of a young woman who takes it upon herself to save her brothers and rid them of a curse which they were put under by their mother.

Bohdanka

Queen Alexandra

Prince Bartoloměj

Prince Norbert

Witch Gabriela

Queen Gabriela

Mother
Father

Anyone who claims that you can't live with half a heart should be invited to a fairy tale about a king who once gained a crown in exchange for half his own heart. He gained a crown for part of his heart, but he lost much more – himself, his wife and his child. The prince must undergo difficult trials and fight a witch to save King Oskar and the kingdom...

Ronia lives happily in her father's castle until she comes across a new playmate, Birk, in the nearby dark forest. The two explore the wilderness, braving dangerous Witchbirds and Rump-Gnomes. But when their families find out Birk and Ronia have been playing together, they forbid them to see each other again. Indeed, their fathers are competing robber chieftains and bitter enemies. Now the two spunky children must try to tear down the barriers that have kept their families apart for so long.

Swollen Stigma nourishes the fantasy of its protagonist’s inner life and proposes a lesbian imaginary which takes leap into risk and displacement. The film opens with an entranced seated woman working her fingers through a single strand of hair and proceeds to explore her lived imaginary in which desire and fear interlace. She re-visions different moments in time which are haunted by an absent lover. Like a playful fairy princess, this lover appears upside down in an armchair, hanging legs-down from the ceiling, playing dead on the floor, or eating roses; her body continuously permeates the woman’s reality. The film’s shifting points of view jump between the protagonist, fantasy spaces and her lover, making an internal world leak into what is external with the fluidity of blood into water.
King

vévoda
Priest

Doctor