Joanna and Jan have been happily married for over 40 years when one day a videocassette appears with a television interview on the work of the Polish statesecurity in the 1950s and 60s. One case mentioned is that of Jerzy Kocjan, a politician in pre-war Krakow. When Kocjan was realeased from prison in 1956, a young security officer was assigned to his daughter Joanna with the objective of marrying her and subsequently keeping tabs on her father. The incredulous Joanna now visits the interviewee, the former state security officer Marcaz, in a house on the outskirts of the Krakow, where he lives on his pension and the royalties from his memoirs. When she demands written proof of his allegation, Marczak hands her a mouldy piece of paper on which the unofficial collaborator "Tadeusz" requests from his superiors an allocation of five metres of imported Hungarian fabric. Joanna´s ghastly suspition is confirmed when she return home: it is the fabric used in 1963 to make her wedding-dress. The next day she suddenly notices she has lost her sence of taste and smell. She hurries home and looks herself up in her study. Shortly afterwards, she moves into a furnished room in Nova Huta. Some weeks later, Joanna learns, more or less by chance, that her husband has suffered a heart attack. She visits him in hospital, unable to bring herself even to touch him at first. When she finally gingerly tries to wipe the sweat off the helpless man´s back, her sence of smell begins to return...

Lorna, a young woman from Kosovo, is finally in prossession of the Belgian passport that was the only reason she married the junkie Claudie. And now the people-trafficking ring that smuggled her into Belgium wants her to marry a Russian who´s ready to pay a lot of money in order to stay in the West. It´s the kind of break Lorna needs if she and her boyfriend Sokol are ever going to open the snack bar she dreams about. The only problem is that Claudie would need to die of an overdose first. Jean Pierre and Luc Dardenne, the Belgian brothers whose interrest in the life of immigrants and the socially marginalised has been evident since their international breakthrough with LA PROMESSE (1996), now portray a young woman from Eastern Europe. Arta Dobroshi plays Lorna, a woman as strong as she is headstrong. Her silence put Claudie´s life at risk, but she slowly begins to rebel against the syndicate on which she depends. As always, the Dardennes´ figures are plausibly rooted in their social milieu, the players impressive, and the film incredebly gripping. There are few other contemporary European filmmakers who pose such lucid questions in regard to guilt and atonement, to the value of labour and money, yet deliver films so thoughful and touching at the same time. And once again - by now it is almost a tradition - with one film they have internationally established a new actress: Arta Dobroshi, who originally came from Kosovo.

A film that thematises apparently chance encounters between people, supposedly random meeting. The episodic narration is in line with the finding that any encounter - human interaction of whatever kind - is inevitably an experience of the self but equally affects those others who happen to be involved. The cross-over narrative mode interweaves the episodes within a web of relationship, a form well known from films like Robert Altman´s SHORT CUTS. It seems apt to charcterise the nature of human interaction. Accordingly, the film begins with an episode in which a radio moderator is about to be brought together with an alleged doppelgänger who is serving a prison sentence. The figure of the female prison governor, however, already points to the next episode, in which she meets up with an old Finnish lover. He´s come to Romania for a congress of criminologists, and when they go up to his hotel room, they´re surprised to find a distraught young girl there. As we later find out, she´s a sister of a now released prisoner from the prison seen in the first episode - and in the course of the film a few more diffuse and chance-like interpersonal ripples spread out among the protagonists...

A young teacher leaves the Prague School where he works alongside his mother and takes a job in a Village School. The shy newcomer is offered a room by Marie, a young widow with a 17-year-old son. While Marie likes the idea of living with a man again, the teacher is more reserved. But he is growing very fond of her son. When he takes advances to the sleepy boy, the teacher´s "secret" can no longer be concealed. To make things worse, an ex-lover arrives for an unexpected visit... Tackling a subject that can be viewed as semi-taboo in Czech cinema still, the director takes a sensitive approach to the young intellectual´s homosexuality, aided by his actor of preference Pavel Liska´s finely rendered depiction of an confused individual unable to face up to his sexual inclinations and permanently running away from himself. At the time, Slama is careful to resist the temptation to depict the teacher as purely the victim of intolerant (village) society. The teacher is condemned to become an outsider precisely because of his initial inability to be candid and open. The film attracted some 200.000 viewers in the Czech Republic - renewed evidence of how young Czech film has come of age and is constantly seeking new themes.