House Without Exit

Tomáš Hlaváček continues his work from the time-lapse documentary "Living Against All Odds", which captured the dispute surrounding the Brno Rapid Re-Housing project. His new film "House Without Exit" focuses on the theme of dignified housing for families in need.

Residents of rental apartments in Brno's "Kuncovce" wanted hot water, electricity, and fair treatment. Instead of receiving these from the owner, who by his own admission "doesn't like colored people", they faced harassment and threats. Neither the police nor the city helped them. In their fight for their rights, they joined forces with activists and lawyers. Hlaváček documents the months-long conflict and its legal aftermath as an engaged observer.

"When I first entered that house, I collided hard with the gap between theoretical understanding and the real experience of extreme poverty and inequality, which cast the residents' fate into lived hopelessness. I observed a space where defending one's own rights, let alone human dignity, is so costly and dangerous that demanding them equals existential threat to oneself and one's family. In Kuncovce I learned that being poor means becoming a commodity of abuse, which no one wants to hear about, because poverty itself is already a crime. There was no way to turn away and pretend this world doesn't exist." – Tomáš Hlaváček