A dark and absurd road-movie comedy in which Grandmother fulfills her dream, Mother stops treating her daughters like kids, the daughters stop treating their husbands like idiots and father's ashes get spread all over the country. Determined to scatter her son's ashes in his Slovakian birthplace, grandma and the family set out in two battered old cars. Removed from the inhibiting influence of home, the daughters start to talk. Zuzana gets drunk with her mother in a bar, while Ilona and Pavel discover their previously unknown attraction for one another. Moments of neat visual humor abound, as when the mother warns granny to mind her eyes when drinking a cocktail with sticks in it. Scenes at the Czech-Slovak border, where the group is refused passage with the ashes, sharply satirize the absurd bureaucracy that has sprung up after the breakup of former Czechoslovakia. With a carefully crafted script and a compassionate perspective on human weakness, SECRETS make for a quietly affirmative experience. A prizewinner at San Sebastian, Thessaloniki, and Tribeca (NY) the film has been invited to numerous other international festivals. (Wanda Bershen)

2002 "THE GOLDEN ARC" the main award: Paris IFF 2003 (Festival du film de Paris)
2002 "THE BEST ACTOR" award for Igor Bares: Tribeca IFF - New York
2003 "THE BEST SCREENPLAY" award: Festroia IFF - Portugal
*Special thanks for rights and prints: Pavel Solc (Prague), Czech Center (Prague)

Director: Alice Nellis
Producer: Pavel Solc
Screenwriter: Alice Nellis

Alice Nellis, barely into her 30's, specialized in English and American studies at Charles University of Prague. She worked as writer and director in Czech TV and then moved to features. Her first feature EENY MEENY began as an exercise for a Film Academy scriptwriting class, where it won a prize and thereby went into production. Garnering a slew of Czech awards, the film went on to international festivals and won the SKYY prize at San Francisco IFF in 2000.