Marcela a Jiří (E05)

The twenty-year-old couple, a horse farmer and a telephone technician, married for love and even had a double wedding. However, they did not keep the biblical promise “where you go I will go” confirming the church ceremony held after the civil wedding for long. Their marriage broke up in a year, after the birth of their daughter Ivanka, for both objective and subjective reasons; to put it in the judge’s words. Living with Jiří’s parents as well as the couple’s immature reluctance to compromise ended up in a series of both tragicomic and painful lawsuits, with a fragile balance of civilized understanding for the sake of their daughter at the end. However, Jiří disappeared both from the film and from Marcela’s life, with the married couple’s story turning into a record of a strenuous existential struggle of an ordinary woman towards whom fate was less merciful than towards others. Taking care of her handicapped son and struggling with the shortage of money, Marcela keeps dreaming of a “good-hearted guy”; however, her troubles are not yet over. Her daughter Ivanka tragically dies in 2005. The huge response to the story of Marcela Haverlandová inspired Helena Třeštíková to make a documentary feature-length film Marcela. (Doc Alliance Films)