🎬 The Future Shapes the Past: The Hilsner Case (2025)

Martin Šmok is a Czech documentary filmmaker, historian and curator whose work centres on modern Jewish history and the Holocaust. He has made several documentary series built on survivor testimonies and curated exhibitions including projects at the Jewish Museum in Prague. He also works with the USC Shoah Foundation …

Jaroslav Róna is a Czech sculptor whose works appear in public spaces and galleries across the country. He is best known for his bronze statue of Franz Kafka in Prague (2003). His sculpture draws on figurative tradition and literary or mythological themes.

Jan Prchal is a Czech historian, writer, and publisher from Polná, long focused on the history of the Polná region. He ran the Linda Polná publishing house and produced a range of local publications, including contributions to the centenary of the Hilsner affair. He appears as a key figure in the documentary The Futur…

Jaroslav V. Mareš is a Czech journalist, researcher, and writer who studied journalism and library science in Prague. He worked at Czech Television and Prima TV, and now runs the investigative website and YouTube channel Badatele.net. For the Hilsner case he did the core archival legwork - uncovering documents that po…

Pavel Štingl is a Czech documentary director and producer born in 1960 in Prague. He studied documentary filmmaking at FAMU and has made over a hundred films, many of them focused on political conflicts, the Holocaust, and personal stories from the margins of history. His credits include Ghetto Named Baluty and The St…

Bryan Felber is an American documentary filmmaker based in Los Angeles, trained at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and at FAMU in Prague. His debut feature, The Future Shapes the Past, centers on the 1899 Hilsner affair and the still-unresolved effort to exonerate Leopold Hilsner. The film premiered in Polná in Novembe…