Lena is a 17-year-old girl from a middle-class family who is experiencing her first love: secret night adventures and magical morning walks along the Danube. However, her dream world is shattered when she is raped. Withdrawing, she ultimately attempts to slit her wrists. Her family, helpless, entrusts her to a psychiatric institute.
Direction
Nvotová's Danube as character—seductive, indifferent, witness.
Acting
Morávková-Zeleníková's pre- and post-violence body language.
Director
Tereza Nvotová
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Slovak cinema's 'new wave' often uses landscape as psychological state; Nvotová studied under the tradition of Juraj Herz.
The title's Slovak original, 'Filthy,' refers to river sediment—Lena is literally and symbolically what gets washed downstream.
SK
