By Jacob Agius
Jiří Mádl, the director of Waves (2024), got his start as an actor in the Czech comedy film Snowboarders (Karel Janák, 2004). The film was the recipient of the Czech Lion Award and the success of this led the young actor to be cast in a number of comedy films. Mádl would go on to work with renowned Slovak director Juraj Jakubisko in the film Bathory (2008) and shortly after, starred in the Czech drama Night Owls (Michaela Palátová, 2008). For his role in Night Owls he was awarded the Crystal Globe for Best Actor at the 2008 Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, which he was the youngest recipient of at the time. Mádl made the shift to directing in 2014 with the family comedy To See the Sea and followed this up with his feature On the Roof (2019), a dramedy about a Vietnamese refugee living in Prague, who forges a strong friendship with an older Czech man. His most recent feature Waves is his most ambitious to date, winning the Audience Awards at Karlovy Vary and the CinEast Film Festival, as well as winning the Satellite Award for Best International Feature. The film’s reception has been so positive in its home country that it was also picked to represent the Czech Republic’s at the 97th Academy Awards.
Waves is a tense political thriller, tracking the beginning and sudden end of the Prague Spring, a period of political liberalisation in former Czechoslovakia that took place between January and August 1968 when the Warsaw Pact countries invaded. This was a time of intense political unrest, where the Czechoslovak government and Soviet Russia enforced strict media censorship and forcefully penalised government detractors. The journalists of Czechoslovak Radio, the country’s oldest radio station, sought to challenge and criticise the government’s authoritarianism in their broadcasts. Through Mádl’s depiction of these journalists and the challenges they face, he posits the question at the core of this film: what choices does one make when they are posed with the political, moral, and emotional dilemmas that come with living through a time of political unrest?
Nowhere is this question more pertinent than in our protagonist Tomáš, an everyman whose primary preoccupation is keeping his head down and taking care of his younger brother, Pavel. Unlike Pavel, who takes to the streets in protest, Tomáš doesn’t believe that he has the privilege to publicly decry the harsh authoritarianism of his government. That is, until a call to disobey is thrust upon him when he happens upon a job at Czechoslovak Radio. The station is led by the enigmatic chief editor Milan Weiner, who refuses to be intimidated by the authoritative pressure imposed on him by state-sanctioned censorship and prompts the station to become more brazen in amplifying their criticisms of the government. In doing so, Milan forces Tomáš to open his eyes to the atrocities being inflicted by his government, and to ultimately fight for freedom.
Soon after beginning to work for the station, Tomáš is pressured into complying with the country’s secret police to report on the activities of his new workplace. The scene where this meeting takes place plays out without any dialogue, with the camera placed outside of the building, looking in through the windows. The mise-en-scéne co-opts us as the audience; we are secret voyeurs, silent accomplices to an unwilling corruption, and the silence is deafening. From here on the film becomes a true political thriller, with the simmering tension overcome by an all-encompassing sense of paranoia. Tomáš must live dual lives, keeping each aspect a secret from the other. He and his brother begin to be followed by shadowy figures until Tomáš is finally threatened and given a final ultimatum: to choose between the wellbeing of his family, or his duty to the station and his hopes of liberalization. For Mádl, Tomáš’s moral dilemma between fighting for the greater good and losing everything is of utmost importance, as these challenges were forced upon an entire generation during the Prague Spring.
Tomáš’ everyman sensibilities paired with the insurmountable pressures placed upon him allow him to be a conduit for the audience. Through the dilemmas Tomáš faces, Mádl casts a grounded, humanistic light on the real-life people depicted in the film. This humanist perspective allows us to perceive these brave historical figures as people with families, aspirations, flaws, and hopes; people whose very lives were at stake simply for choosing to fight for liberation.
Regarding Waves, Mádl has been candid that his primary focus was on the humanistic and emotional aspects of the characters, more so than the politics surrounding the Prague Spring. He has stated that he wanted Waves to appeal to those who do and don’t know about this period of Czech and Slovak history, and that in striving to do so, he wanted the characters’ intentions and emotions to remain clear to the audience. Yet in striving for a sense of clarity and a humanistic approach to the emotional and moral depths of his characters, the political undertones begin to shine through, despite what Mádl has stated. In seeing Waves’ events play out through the eyes of journalists-cum-activists, one cannot help but feel as though they are experiencing these traumatic events alongside them, particularly in the sequence depicting the Warsaw Pact invasion. Much of this sequence blends archival footage seamlessly into the film’s cinematography. In brief moments, characters are etched into the past, as if this visual indivisibility is history bleeding into the present before our very eyes. This visual effect, paired with the clarity of Mádl’s storytelling and the strong emotional performances of the cast, positions the film as a plea for history not to repeat itself. It is impossible not to answer its call.
Waves screens at ACMI on Saturday 29 March, and at The Regal Theatre, Adelaide on Thursday 10 April.
Jiří Mádl’s films have been a proud part of our festival, with his first two features To See the Sea (Pojedeme k moři, 2014) and On the Roof (Na střeše, 2019) both serving as Opening Night selections. We’re delighted to present these special screenings—including the South Australian premiere—of his third film.