ST. HELEN'S ISLAND – SYNOPSIS

Jazz singer František (Laďa Kerndl), who has made his living as a musician on transatlantic cruisers, has recently been surrounded by frustration. His former fame (and money) is gone. He is losing his voice and wife. His daughter Helen (Tatiana Vilhelmová) left him long ago. She preferred to leave for the distant Romanian region of Banat and to teach the local Czech minority children Czech than to listen to the endless quarrels at home.

František is left alone. He thinks about what went wrong in his life and whether he can put his mistake right. He needs money and earns extra money as a worker in a brewery. Then he visits his ill friend, Gusta (Pavel Bobek), a fellow musician in the country. It is the solitary Gusta who advises František to let his wife go but not to lose his daughter! So František sets out to search for his daughter a thousand kilometres away in the Czech village of St. Helen, which lies in the mountains above the Danube River. Before František leaves, Gusta writes the lyrics of a song he would like to sing together with František, his daughter and a band. The song confuses František – it is about death:

So when the shadows link them
Into an evening sun
Well first there's summer
Then I'll let you in
September when it comes

His journey to Romania, searching for his daughter, who refuses all communication with him, his meeting with the peculiar country people and seeing the godforsaken countryside - all this is a new key to František’s own life as well as to Gusta´s song, which he could not cope with.

His escape from the city’s noise into the sounds of nature, meeting with people who live in harmony with nature and God - this brings František to a reconciliation with the idea that he had felt worried as he grew older: that the end of life does not necessarily have to scare you, but it can find you balanced and reconciled.

František’s daughter never turns up in St. Helen. He returns home alone, but his journey has a surprising dénouement.

Script: Vlastimil ŠIMŮNEK, Andrea BÍLKOVÁ
Script Editor: Bedřich LUDVÍK
Architect: Tomáš MORAVEC
Costumes Designer: Iva RAŠKOVÁ
Masks: Klaudie HAVLOVÁ-TURKOVÁ
Music: Luboš MALINA
Sound: Roman ČAPEK, Miloš SOMMER, Jiří MACH
Editing: Jan PETRAS & Life JACKET
Director of Photography: Richard ŠPŮR, AČK
Director, Producer: Vlastimil ŠIMŮNEK