Distant Journey

digitally restored film

Alfred Radok's feature debut provides a still unique answer to the question of how to express the inexpressible. The film does not interpret the horrors of the Terezín concentration camp directly, but through a comparison of the different visions that shaped the horrific reality of the Holocaust. The multi-layered artistic reportage therefore combines a melodramatic story, echoes of expressionism and a self-reflexive play with documentary and fiction.

The film will be shown in the digitally restored form to which it was brought in 2019 under the supervision of the National Film Archive.

The digital restoration of Long Way Gone was undertaken with the intention of making the film available in its existing technological conditions, so that it is as faithful as possible to the hypothetical form it was in when it was first shown. The restoration itself was preceded by extensive research into the surviving film materials, along with research into non-film sources, in order to obtain as much detailed information as possible about the production and exhibition of the film and its original form. Among other things, archival sources and the contemporary press show that the film, completed in December 1948, was not shown and approved by the censors until May 1949. Although a Prague premiere was scheduled for May, the official release of Far Away was not eventually made - from mid-1949 it was shown in a limited distribution circuit, mostly in cinemas outside Prague, and without much press coverage. Now, thanks to the digital format, the film will return to cinemas.

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)