Ice Mother

67-year-old widow Hana is the Queen of Sunday dinners, and a self-sacrificing counsellor to anyone who needs it. As the head of the family she is both a industrious mother and a caring grandmother. In spite of all this, her family is on the verge of implosion. Her two grown sons could not be more different from one another: Where one is about to lose himself and his family in a dumb and expensive book collection project, the other finds himself in somewhat of a squeeze between a brooding wife and a screen-addicted son of his own. Hana cooks potatoes and soups, and sets the table with her very finest crockery. She might have opinions on this or that, but keeps her mouth shut unless it is to dish out compliments wherever possible. But it cannot go on like this for much longer.

Hana’s salvation comes in the form of ice bather Broňa. He is a real man, smelling of sawdust and of a life lived. He is unpretentious and comfortable in his own skin, as a caretaker for a chicken and a bus. Hana loses herself in him and the whole ice bathing club, and literally throws herself into unknown, icy cold waters – discovering that there is in fact a life outside of the bourgeois misery she has for so long been so intent on maintaining. This discovery leads to a quiet project of self-realisation, whereby Hana and her sons must find new ways to communicate. Ice Mother gives new life to the grey and cold Czech landscape, through a sometimes Jeanne Dielman-esque character who manages to break free from her repetitive and claustrophobic domestic existence.

Bohdan Sláma (b. 1967) is a renowned Czech director born in Opava. He studied at the state Czexh film school FAMU and has directed a number of feature films and TV series. Among his best known films are Something Like Happiness (2005), The Country Teacher (2008) and 4 Suns (2012).