Tragic Monday (Zlé pondělí)

Throughout his career, from the mid-1950s until his sudden death at the age of thirty-nine in 1969, director Milan Vošmik focused on film and TV production about and for children, for example in his debut film adaptation of Bohumil Říha’s children’s book Johnny’s Journey (1956) and the popular family film Daddy, Buy Me a Puppy (1964). The psychological drama Tragic Monday, which also appealed to an adult audience, was promoted through the distribution slogan “The conflict between fear and the courage to confess”. Set on a sunny afternoon and rainy evening in Brno, the story follows the different ways in which a trio of nine-year-old boys deal with the weight of their consciences after their classmate ends up under the wheels of a passing car. He also observes their different reactions to the situation in the context of their family background, especially with regard to the authority of father figures.

Jana Bébarová