A country that could be anywhere, not precisely localized and yet everywhere. It’s a beautiful summer’s day when the life of siblings Kyona and Adriel changes forever. Their village is raided, destroyed and set on fire. The whole family is forced to flee and experiences many real and surreal situations on their tracks across a whole continent to finally arrive, perhaps, at a more peaceful place.

At the start of the film, Kyona leafs through a sketchbook, takes stock of her life and talks about the end of her childhood. It is only later that the siblings even realize that they are refugees, that like many others they are making their way to the border for a variety of reasons: natural disasters, the consequences of climate change, war, persecution. The two children come across dangerous and helpful people, are separated and find each other again. This feature-length animation, realized in oil on glass, relies on the rapid interplay between fantasy and reality, taking us, on the one hand, into a fictitious, non-real world. But on the other hand, the places, names, situations remind us of familiar things. They show fleeing, exile, setting out as a universal experience.

There is something very subtle about the moment when children become adults that it can hardly be put into words. In fact, hidden, almost imperceptible changes suddenly appear that act like tectonic shifts in the human psyche. In her documentary debut, Marie-Magdalena Kochová has managed to capture this subtle move. She documents the life of 18-year-old Johana, who lives with her parents and her younger sister in a small town in the Czech Republic.
The sister has autism. Her health condition is severe and unpredictable. Her hysterical fits and aggressive outbursts dictate the life of the whole family. All the schedules are synchronised so that someone is always with the youngest. The well-practised routine is threatened when Johana decides to apply for a study programme in psychology at the university after her school exams. This means that she will soon have to move to another city, leaving the entire burden on the parents. Kochová shows us a transitional period in anticipation of massive changes, which requires everyone involved to have firm confidence in their own decisions. The mental tension is palpable, but the camera maintains an equalising distance. Step by step, the beauty of a challenged life unfolds, where courage becomes the only measure.