GALA SCREENING OF MORNING GLOW AT FEBIOFEST

HER PARENTS GAVE HER AN UNAPPROVED NAME. BUT HER EXCEPTIONAL FATE WAS NOT HER CHOICE…

Febiofest rolled out the red carpet for the delegation of actors and filmmakers behind Morning Glow – the latest from director and screenwriter Dan Wlodarczyk. Jan Plouhar, Petra Bučková, Veronika Žilková, Pavel Nový, Pavel Zedníček, and others were cast in the main roles of this story inspired by true events. Its premiere on TV Nova’s Voyo premium-television service is planned for June.

This miniseries follows the story of the Juneks, a family living an alternative lifestyle, whose eight-month-old daughter was taken from them because they gave her the name “Morning Glow” – one not on the official list of allowed names that alone may chosen for newborns by law in the Czech Republic, nor manually approved. After an intervention by the Czech Ombudsman, the girl was returned to the family, but by then the affair had taken on a life of its own. The media interpreted it as a clash with small-town officials abusing bureaucratic formalism to complicate the lives of people who simply rub them the wrong way. In short, the Junek’s alternative lifestyle provokes them. Morning Glow thus quickly became a symbol of the state apparatus’ despotism towards non-conformist stances, and simultaneously a symbol of civil resistance. Where are the borders between normal and alternative? Where does an individual’s freedom to decide on the life they will live and the rules they will live it by begin and end? How should or shouldn’t the State intervene in the rights of parents?