Fair Play

Czechoslovakia, 1983. Anna, a young sprinter, is picked for the national team and put into Olympic preparation. She is entered into a special state-run medical programme and given anabolic steroids without being told. Her times improve. When she collapses at a training session she finds out what she has been taking and decides to stop. Her mother Irena knows what that means. Andrea Sedláčková's film takes on the state-run doping systems of the Eastern bloc and does not load the blame onto one person: the athlete, the mother, the coach and the doctor are each squeezed separately inside the same system. The mother's wish to get her daughter to the Olympics is at the same time a wish to get her out of the country. Anna Geislerová plays the mother. The film was the Czech Republic's Oscar submission that year.