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Last Thursday, June 27, was the 74th anniversary of the execution of Czech lawyer and parliamentarian Milada Horáková (1901-1950) and I attended the event organized by CADAL and the Embassy of the Czech Republic in Buenos Aires for the screening of the film MILADA (2017). The film tells the story of Milada Horáková, victim of the political prosecutions of Nazis and Communists in what was then Czechoslovakia. She was the only woman executed during these prosecutions and thanks to her steadfastness and fight for her ideals she became the symbol of resistance against the communist regime.
The film is a well-prepared and accurate historical document of women's struggles to assert their opinions. The plot makes it clear on more than one occasion how this woman had no qualms about expressing her ideas in front of opportunistic, spineless politicians who folded their arms in the face of the fascist and later Soviet communist stampede of which she suffered the harshest experiences. The film does not wallow in the details of what it might have been like to live in a Nazi concentration camp, it only shows us with some very well selected scenes the contempt and humiliation with which all the human beings were treated who had the misfortune of living that nightmare. The screenwriters, Robert J. Conant and Robert Gant, from a book written by the director David Mrnka himself, give enough subtle details to show the similarities between the defeated fascists and the communists in the struggle for a new world order. How in the name of the people and the victims of the holocaust, the communists mounted a discourse of hatred towards different thoughts and decided to suppress through the most terrible tortures, humiliations, blackmail and deprivation of rights that not even the fascists themselves had put in place.
"Communists are the new Nazis"; that disturbing scene announced the horror that was on the way, which surpassed the experiences of a concentration camp of the Nazi hordes and would lead Milada to her execution despite the clemency requested by great personalities of the time, such as Albert Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Jean-Paul Sartre.
I couldn't stop thinking about Cuba and its terrible destiny linked to the ideas of fascistic communism for over half a century, which keeps thousands of Cubans imprisoned, persecuted and deprived of their rights. I could not stop thinking for a single minute of the film about Alina Bárbara Hernández, a Cuban woman who is persecuted, silenced and physically abused for exposing her ideas and proposing changes for the well-being of all Cubans. And how the government repressors, backed by the same discourse of equality and sovereignty, deploy a repressive and abusive machinery that they are willing to use to the ultimate consequences.
Through this film I learned about the life of this wonderful woman and it was a revelation. It is one of the many films that the Cuban government goes out of its way not to mention. It reminded me of films like Andrzej Wajda's Katyń, which was nominated for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 2007 and recreates one of the darkest episodes in Polish history: the murder of thousands of Polish officers at the hands of the Russian secret police in 1940; or the Oscar winning documentary directed by Daniel Roher, which recounts the most recent events of the communist massacre of Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader and anti-corruption activist. All these films echoed in my head as I left the auditorium of the Centro Cultural San Martin in Buenos Aires where a tearful and supportive audience felt compassion for this extraordinary woman who was masterfully played by the Israeli actress Ayelet Zurer, who had appeared in well-known Hollywood productions such as Munich or Angels & Demons. Zurer said in an interview that the most difficult role of her career had been that of the Czech activist. She had to research the person and the era, place herself in a completely different reality, understand how she saw the world and how she related to others.
Ales Brezina's masterfully subtle music is matched by Martin Strba's well-done cinematography, which gives us an emotional final shot of Horáková's soul. It is worth mentioning the tremendous cast composed by Ayelet Zurer, Robert Gant, Daniel Rchichev, Karina Rchichev, Tatjana Medvecká, Vica Kerekes, Igor Orozovic, Jaromír Dulava, Alena Mihulová, Vladimír Javorský, Marian Mitas, Anna Geislerová. All directed by David Mrnka who did an excellent job, with a lot of sensitivity and very intelligent solutions regarding the treatment of violence and the personal relationships of the characters.
It is one of those films that leave you thinking for days and that I would like many people to see.
