René (2008)

"Why has my shitty life turned out like this? No-one knows. Not even God. God's on holiday and he's reading porn" - an excerpt from Diary of the Forgotten, the journal kept by the main protagonist in another of Helena Trestíková's long-term documentaries. With raw authenticity, the director records the luckless fate of René over a period of twenty years as he yo-yos between prison and freedom. The life of René, who successfully styles himself in the role of a desperado, unfolds against a backdrop of important political events occurring in the Czech Republic and beyond its borders. The Velvet Revolution, the presidential election, 9/11 and the Czech Republic's accession to the EU - all this is "digested" by René, mostly from the confines of various prisons.