GIRL AMERICA
The story of the girl they never got.
2024_GIRL_AMERICA_FILM
You're going back. To the places you grew up. You're shaking. You're sweating. You're swallowing. You can't escape the memories. Some are like colorful paintings. Some are like punches. An orphanage under communists. The foster parents. The juvie. And then, the Velvet Revolution. Freedom that leaves you wondering what to do next. You've fallen a hundred times — but you get back up every time. They didn't get you. Because you weren't alone. You had yourself. And you had hope. Hope that one day you'd escape to America. Where your father is waiting for you. Girl America. The story of the girl who stopped running.
How hard can get hit and keep moving forward?
Director/producer Viktor Tauš delivers the film experience of the year. Girl America tells its story in a uniquely stylized cinematic language, bursting with surreal colors, warped realities, and vivid dreamscapes. Despite the absence of realism, the intense sense of truth bleeds out of the film — the story, the characters, the scars. All are based on lived experience. The children in the film portray abandoned characters, and, coming mostly from orphanages themselves, they infuse their roles with their own life experiences.
The protagonist is based on a girl Viktor Tauš met in the 1990s, when he was homeless.
“We were part of the first generation made victim by freedom. Homeless people were then mainly thousands of children who grew up alone, without parents, in socialist orphanages.”
You’re just a child and the whole world is against you. What are you going to do?
PRODUCTION DESIGNJan Kadlec
The world of the film is woven from the main heroine’s fantasies of escape and freedom.
We act based on what we live and strive for, not what we’re trying to escape.
Amerikanka captures our fear of insignificance and exclusion.
CREATORS
FEATURE FILM | 2024 | CZ, SK, CH | 110 MIN.
Director, Producer: Viktor Tauš Scriptwriter: David Jařab Production Designer: Jan Kadlec Costume Designer: Jan Kadlec Executive Producer: Michal Sikora Director of Photography: Martin Douba Editor: Alois Fišárek, Krzysztof Komander Line Producer: Aneta Novotná Production Manager: Donika Žánová Sound Designer: Michał Fojcik Makeup Artist: Jana Dopitová Music: Jan Prokeš
CAST
Pavla Beretová, Julie Šoucová, Klára Kitto, Lucie Žáčková, Klára Melíšková, Tomas Sean Pšenička, Magdaléna Borová, Vladimír Javorský, Zuzana Mauréry, Zuzana Kronerová, Nikola Trojánková, Bára Holzknechtová, Karla Bábková, Klára Bystroňová, David Novotný, Václav Neužil, Denisa Barešová, Tereza Ramba, Eliška Křenková
The True Story Behind “Amerikanka”: A Cinematic Journey of Resilience and Hope
Viktor Tauš, the film’s director, recalls the moment he first met “Amerikanka,” or Zdena — 25 years ago when he was living on the streets. “She became like a sister to me, and we spent days talking about everything that had happened in our lives,” he says. Zdena’s grew up with her family in a […]