Ordeal

synopsis

In the past ten years, the Slovak citizens’ trust in justice has fallen sharply. Thanks to the access to Threema messages of Marian Kočner, a businessman under investigation in relation to the murder of the journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kušnírová, a vast corruption network within state administration and the justice system has been revealed. Disintegrating the merciless machinery including corrupt judges, rich and influential businessmen, mafia, politicians, and innocent citizens alike, is all but an easy task. Reflecting on the long-term crisis of the Slovak justice system, Zuzana Piussi’s investigative documentary asks whether the justice system with its many failures can ever be corrected.


“The film emphasises the fact that the failure of the justice system is one of the reasons why people vote for anti-system parties, expecting remedy from them. In vain. If the justice system was working properly, the state could never be controlled by oligarchy and mafia to such an extent.” (Zuzana Piussi)

biography

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Zuzana Piussi (1971) is a film director and documentarist who studied film directing at the Film and TV Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava, Slovakia, and who cooperated with the Stoka theatre in the 1990s. In her works, she has been focusing on political affairs and societal phenomena resonating in Czech and Slovak society. She has co-authored film such as Common Sense (2017), University and Freedom (2019) or The Siege (2019). Her most recent film Ordeal (2021) addressing the justice system crisis in Slovakia is a follow-up to her feature-length documentary The State Capture (2019) exposing the deficiencies of democracy in the former Socialist block.

more about film

director:	Zuzana Piussi
cast:	Katarína Javorčíková, Janka Javorková, Pavel Macko, Elena Berthotyová, Igor Matovič, Pavol Korytár
producer:	Vít Janeček
photography:	Miro Remo
editing:	Šimon Špidla
music:	Lucia Piussi
sound:	Adam Matej
sound design:	Jan Richtr
executive producer:	Vít Janeček