This compelling chronicle of an average family against the backdrop of Czech history is the result of collecting visual material and keeping diaries over a period of 37 years.

Honza was born in 1974 into the cheerless era of socialism in Czechoslovakia. At that time, his parents Jana and Petr lived in one room in the apartment of Jana’s divorced mother and her widowed grandmother. A few years later, the family moved from Prague to Liberec where Petr found a job and a little house for the family.

When Honza was born, his father began writing a family chronicle and he has continued to do so for 37 years. Private Universe shows not only the life of one ordinary family, but also how the Czech society has changed in the last four decades. Who are we, where do we come from and where do we go?

Dir. Helena Třeštíková - 83min - 2012 - Czech Republic

"Adding to an oeuvre already noteworthy for its formidable scope, Czech documaker Helena Trestikova unveils perhaps her most ambitious longform documentary to date...intimate and perceptive" - Variety

"Minutely recorded personal triumphs—a child’s first tooth, a new Trabant car—set up a comic tension with historic events and popular culture, shown via old television clips." - ArtForum