On the Roof

Song, a twenty year old Vietnamese man living in Prague, had hoped for a better future in Europe. Now he is kept shut inside a cannabis grow house and lives the life of a modern slave. When the police raid the place he runs and climbs to the roof of a nearby apartment block, where he breaks down. Mr Rypar, seventy eight, lives alone; he is fond of the old days and stubbornly set against the world as it is. Going up to the roof, he meets Song weeping at the edge, and the story begins there. The film gives forced labour not as background but as the reason the young man is where he is. Alois Svehlik appears in Jiri Madl’s Czech film, completed in 2019.