Ever had that hopeless, desperate feeling? When you feel like things have gone off the rails and everything you’re working so hard for seems to have fallen apart?
Of course, you have, we’ve all been there. That feeling that you’re all alone, battling against the odds to reach your goal.
For very different reasons and driven by vastly different motivations, this struggle is the central theme of two of our feature films, Okhwan’s Mission Impossible and Out.
These two features tell their story also in a vastly different way – one a documentary following the real-life adventure of Okhwan Yoon as he cycles around the world to publicise his cause, overcoming car collisions, operations, even kidnappings to reach his elusive dream.
So, why of all filmmakers would particularly a Slovak director Marek Mackovič want to bring this Korean Don Quijote-like story to us?
The story of a law graduate, successful businessman giving up his career, his whole life in one small backpack, setting off on a bike trip around the world which would take him across 192 countries over 10 years?
Marek Mackovič Okhwan’s Mission Impossible, a project shot over several years, bicycle road movie was finished in 2016.
The shots he made with Okhwan in July 2010 in Nepal were used by directors Kevin
Macdonald (awarded with an Oscar) and Loressa Clisby in their project Life in a Day, streamed during the prestigious 2011 Sundance festival.
The other feature, Out, is a ‘fiction’ tale not so much of a self-imposed midlife crisis as that of external events that seems to sneak up on us from nowhere.
Our hero, Agoston’s life is unwittingly jolted out of its comfortable existence when he loses his job at 50. Not a big deal you might say. But then Agoston lives in a small Slovak town where there’s very little work prospects apart from his former employer. Since Agoston has already had his life turned upside down, he decides to go all the way and uproots himself from his life and familiar surroundings in search of not just a job but also his dreams.
What can such a search bring? Is it doomed to fail or does hope and sheer willpower prevail?
The Hungarian Slovak, Győrgy Kristóf comedy-drama debut portraying the current- day odyssey will no doubt resonate with many of us.
Tickets for both films go on sale at Dendy Newtown next Wednesday 18th of MAY
OUT/ Out: FR 18 May 9 PM
OKHWAN’S MISSION IMPOSSIBLE/ Okhwan, na ceste za slobodou: SU 20 May 4 PM