Plot

As a car full of an assortment of characters rolls down an embankment and bursts into flames, the old driver says "See You in Hell, Friends." The relations between the characters are shown in flashbacks. The pretty Rita and her fiancee Petras meet the old colonel, and come to live in his farmhouse. Rita marries the colonel as well as her fiancee, and has a daughter Christine. The colonel's supposed father shows up, and also makes amorous advances on Rita. They all live blissfully together until two holy women with axes arrive. The women start chopping down trees to build an ark. Rita starts having nightmares and Christine is crucified.—Will Gilbert

This bizarre story is full of surrealistic symbols, polemic about God, equity, catastrophic visions, and fear and panic from the bloody path of man and human history. Human society is trying to escape the red ark of totalitarianism, searching for salvation in the creation of an imaginary family. Beautiful Rita and her partner Petras, together with the old Colonel and the kidnapped baby, are trying to create a society outside of the real world. The fingers of fanatic dogmatists and their equity (then it was the communist totalitarianism and now it s Bin Laden s terrorism) find them, yet there is a hope at the end of the film. With the fall of the wall around the ark the free world opens up for the main characters and others as well.

J. Jakubisko.: This film belongs in the Guinness Book of World Records. I began shooting it during the Prague Spring in 1968, but the communist censorship stopped it right before it was finished. I was only allowed to finish it 22 years later! During the shooting I was more and more sure of the fact that this film will be unacceptable for the censors. Therefore I focused on the aesthetics of storytelling, using symbols and double meanings. I didnt know that in fact it wouldnt be censors deciding about this film, but instead the political powers. In this period of realization the circle was drawing tighter not only around me but also around the whole Czechoslovak art community. See You in Hell, My Friends! was the last sentence for friends and the whole intelligentsia, the scream of the hopeless who felt the freedom of the world was over forever.

1 hour 20 minutes / Color Shot in 1970, finished in 1990 Premiere screening: November 1990 Produced by: Slovenská filmová tvorba, Bratislava, Czechoslovakia / Stella Telecinomatografica, Rome, Italy