Petr Jancarek’s ‘Havel Speaking’ Captures Czech Ex-President’s Bittersweet Foray into Film Directing

variety.com:

Will Tizard Contributor Petr Jancarek’s chronicle of the last years of Vaclav Havel’s life, “Havel Speaking, Can You Hear Me?,” screening in its world premiere at the Ji.hlava Intl.

Documentary Film Festival, is as naturalistic and down to earth as its subject. The director, who filmed the former Czech president for nearly a decade in various capacities, says Havel was unlike any national leader he ever knew. “I could see this modest person who is incredibly hardworking,” Jancarek recalls, “a true director of everything, standing by his beliefs, despite discomfort or loss of personal freedom.” In the years before Havel’s death in 2011, Jancarek filmed hundreds of hours behind the scenes as the one-time dissident playwright, who found himself leading then Czechoslovakia in the wake of the 1989 Velvet Revolution, endeavored to complete his life dream, directing a feature film.

Havel was adapting his own play, “Leaving,” a biting satire of politics and the forces of crass commercialism inspired by both “King Lear” and Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard,” for the screen just a year before losing his battle with advancing illness in 2011.

Ever the creative and intellectual, Havel was no born president, Jancarek says. “He was not a typical politician but the artist who answered the need of a historical era.