Official Oscar® Entry Best Foreign Language Film from Czech Republic: ‘Ice Mother’

Icy cold but so heart-warming, this funny study of three generations of a family brings out our best feelings as we partake in the liberation of a sixty-seven-year-old widow as she finally manages to shake off the influence of her selfish sons in order to begin a new life.

When Hana, played by the well-loved actress, Zuzana Kronerova, finds a group of eccentric ice swimmers, a new world opens to her and her grandson who is facing bullying at school and self-occupied parents at home.

Is there an age limit to changing your life? Are you ever too old or too young?And once you decide to go ahead with it, your nearest and dearests’ reactions, especially their efforts dissuade in order to protect their own fragile balance in life become apparent in Bohdan Sláma’s new tragicomedy in which a sixty-seven-year-old widow finally manages to shake off the influence of her selfish sons in order to begin a new life with a hardy nonconformist whose favorite pastime is swimming in ice cold water.

She takes along her grandson who also finds enjoyment and unequivocal acceptance among the ice swimmers.

The film premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival where it won the Jury Award for Best Screenplay for an International Narrative Feature:

A screenplay can create a world. With warmth and humor, this movie leads us into a specific and eccentric world driven by an unlikely love story. The Best Screenplay Award goes to Bohdan Sláma for Ice Mother.

Sláma is mostly known internationally for his 2001 film Divoke vcely (The Wild Bees), which won the Tiger Award at Rotterdam.

Zuzana Kronerova, the well loved Czech star (who says she is actually Slovakian) and director Bohdan Sláma have a long history together and had a funny and provocative repartee going thoughout the Q&A which followed the screening held in L.A. by the European Film Promotion. Daughter of actor Josef Kroner who was in The Shop on Main Street, the 1988 Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Language Film, she is hoping Ice Mother is nominated as well.

When Slama wrote the script he had no actors in mind except for Zuzana and he didn’t know if she would do it, although she has been in every film of Slama’s. Their first film together was Home Care. In one film she had only one word, “No”. But she likes his scripts she said as Slama added, “Not me personally, but the scripts…”.

The child, Daniel Vízek, was chosen out of 300 children. “He just knew how to play the character naturaly”, Slama said.

The chickens were originally parrots, but there was already another movie with parrots, so we had to go with the chickens”, added Slama as he discussed casting.

The film mostly followed the script except sometimes it needed changes when it did not ring true. We also use the life experience of the actors too. And though the structure was followed, sometimes there were some improvisations as well.

Training to swim in ice water of 1–4 centigrade, in which more than 22 minutes submersion can be deadly, was something Zuzana did not relish, but now that she has mastered it, she continues to swim in ice water. “A method actor” someone in the EFP Screening audience shouted out.

“I like working with non actors”, added Zuzanna

It inspires me and this time it changed my life. Ice swimming is a group activity because the water is so cold and sometimes they help each other. The swimmers go from 14 years old to 90, all ages, all classes.

Tatiana Vilhelmová plays a venomous daughter-in-law, wife and mother whose bitterness finally destroys her family as she reacts to the changes of her mother-in-law and her son. Starting with a minor role, her central place as the opposition is gradual and almost unnoticeable as she transitions from playing the long-suffering wife to the antagonistic and thankfully thwarted villainess.

A coproduction of Czech Republic, Slovakia and France. International sales are by The Match Factory which is also representing two other Academy Award submissions, Argentina’s Zama (Toronto FF) and Israel’s Foxtrot.

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