Voted the best Czech film of all time, Marketa Lazarová is a powerful and passionate medieval epic set in the mid-13th Century. Based on avant-garde writer Vladislav Vancura’s novel, it follows the rivalry between two warring clans, the Kozlíks and the Lazars, and the doomed love affair of Mikolá Kozlík and Marketa Lazarová.

Vlacil draws upon remote historical sources to recreate an authentic primitive world and fashion a film with surprising contemporary impact. Owing as much to the stylistic vigour of Kurosawa's Seven Samurai as it does to the rich tapestry of Czech fiction, this ambitious and poetically extraordinary film is the crowning achievement of Vlacil's career and an undiscovered cornerstone of world cinema.