A lightly philosophical flight of fancy dressed up like a deadpan stage farce, Bird Atlas is the third feature from Slovenia-born, Prague-based director Olmo Omerzu. On the surface, the narrative concerns the Lear-like struggles of a gruff CEO to hold his crumbling family business together. But thanks to its gentle patina of magical realism, notably a background chorus of talking birds who comment on the unfolding action, this low-key charmer is also a comic parable about lives ruined and families divided by too much focus on money: the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Omerzu’s previous feature was the 2018 coming-of-age road movie Winter Flies, which won him the best director prize at Karlovy Vary festival, multiple domestic awards and the official Czech nomination to the Oscars. He returned to KVIFF this year to premiere Bird Atlas, a modestly scaled multi-national co-production that could take flight internationally with the right kind of wind behind it. Feeling like a gentler European cousin of HBO’s hit family saga Succession in places, this cautionary fable swaps high-voltage boardroom powerplay in favor of sly social satire and bittersweet absurdism.
Veteran Czech character actor Miroslav Donutil gives an enjoyably sour, gravelly, curmudgeonly lead performance as Ivo Rona, the bullying patriarch who has headed a family technology firm for the last 30 years. After he is suddenly hospitalized with heart problems, Ivo’s grown-up children and their spouses (Martin Pechlát, Vojtech Kotek, Eliska Krenková) gather to weigh up their future options, unwittingly uncovering their father’s secret network of mistresses in the process. But Ivo has scant faith in his offspring’s business acumen and refuses to relinquish control, rising from his sick bed to investigate a huge hole in the company finances.
Meanwhile, Ivo’s long-suffering office secretary Marie (Alena Mihulová) has taken a holiday in a snowy mountain retreat, where she plans an assignation with her long-distance internet boyfriend, a shadowy US army officer serving in Afghanistan. He never arrives, but Ivo and his family turn up at the door instead, accusing Marie of feathering her nest with millions embezzled from company accounts. As the situation escalates, unresolved emotional tensions crackle between Ivo and Marie. The missing money leads to a bitter legal battle that drives Ivo into a paranoid rage against family and friends, police investigators and business rivals alike.
As decades of boardroom scams, bedroom betrayals and romantic self-delusions begin to unravel, Omerzu cuts away to his chattering support cast of birds, their subtitled tweets serving as sardonic commentary on Ivo’s misfortunes. “Without family, one shivers in the infinite cosmos,” one trills. “The pleasures of the mighty are built on the tears of the poor”, another coos. This playful device could have been a whimsical gimmick, but Omerzu builds it into an organic Twitterstorm of avian wit and wisdom, mocking the petty vanities and warped values of the humans below.
Structurally, Bird Atlas feels like a traditional stage play, especially in the way it peels away festering family resentments and buried secrets. But Omerzu is not entirely beholden to dusty convention here, swerving away from delivering a neat resolution in the final act, instead handing over to his chirping avian chorus to round off the dramatic loose ends. He also punctuates the narrative with grainy desert warfare footage, apparently genuine, a recurring motif that invokes Marie’s mysterious military lover without making him a concrete presence.
Omerzu’s regular technical team, including cinematographer Lukas Milota and editor Jana Vlckova, deliver a polished but unshowy package while the ensemble cast are generally excellent. Donutil, a Czech screen staple since Communist times, is particularly well cast, conveying fathomless depths of impotent rage with every wordless grimace, impatient huff and soul-weary sigh.
Director: Olmo Omerzu
Screenplay: Petr Pýcha, Olmo Omerzu
Cast: Miroslav Donutil, Alena Mihulová, Martin Pechlát, Vojtech Kotek, Eliska Krenková, Pavla Beretová
Producer Jirí Konecný
Cinematography: Lukáš Milota
Production designer: Antonín Šilar
Editing: Jana Vicková
Music: Monika Omerzu Midriaková
Sound design: Pavel Rejholec
Production companies: Endorfilm (Cz) Czech Television (Cz), Cviger film (Slovenia), Punkchart (Slovakia), Melocoton (France)
World sales: Cercamon, Dubai
90 minutes
