Father (Otec) Film Review: A Tragedy

Father (Otec) is a devastating drama about grief, guilt, and Forgotten Baby Syndrome, powered by two raw, heartbreaking performances.

What follows is a harrowing unraveling of his marriage, his freedom, and his very sense of self, as he and his wife Zuzka (Dominika Morávková-Zeleníková) struggle to confront a loss no parent is prepared to endure.

After watching Father, I had to take a walk just to clear my head. It is one of those films that crawl under your skin and stay there, not because it is manipulative, but because it feels terrifyingly real. Tereza Nvotová’s direction does not sensationalize the tragedy; it traps you inside it, forcing you to sit with the unbearable reality of one man’s mistake. From the first scene, as Michal jogs home to his wife and daughter feeding chickens, everything feels warm and full of life. The film even plays with light, which is bright and cheerful in the opening only to turn grey and suffocating once the tragedy sets in. It is a visual shift that mirrors Michal’s inner collapse, and it is one of the reasons Father feels so haunting.

What struck me most was how intimate the film feels. Much of it looks as though it was shot in long, uninterrupted takes, the camera gliding through rooms as if it were another member of the household. This approach does not just add realism, it makes the story feel inescapable. When Michal is moving through his home, wrestling with guilt and silence, the camera does not cut away. We are forced to follow, to feel the same suffocating weight that he carries.

Milan Ondrík gives one of the best performances I have seen in 2025. He does not play Michal as a man who explodes outwardly; instead, he folds inward. His guilt is isolating, almost paralyzing, and you can see in his eyes how desperately he is grasping at anything, his marriage, his dignity, his sanity, to keep from breaking completely. It is not a performance built on big moments, but on small, excruciating details: a hand trembling as he tries to hold a cup, a pause before answering his wife, the inability to even say his daughter’s name.

Dominika Morávková-Zeleníková is just as powerful as Zuzka. Where Michal internalizes everything, she externalizes, processing her grief through anger, distance, and desperate attempts to make sense of the senseless. Their dynamic is fascinating to watch because grief does not move in sync, it pulls them apart in jagged, uneven rhythms. In their arguments, you feel the unbearable question sitting between them: can love survive a mistake this catastrophic?

Nvotová is careful not to exploit the tragedy. There are no melodramatic courtroom scenes or manipulative score swells. Instead, she leans into silence, stillness, and atmosphere. The foreshadowing at the start, the radio casually mentioning the extreme heat as Michal showers, lands like a knife in hindsight, one of those mundane details that suddenly feels loaded with unbearable consequence.

Father is not an easy watch. In fact, it deeply upset me. But that is also why it is unforgettable. It refuses to offer tidy answers or cheap catharsis. Instead, it lingers in the messy, unresolvable truth of grief, guilt, and human fallibility. It asks us to sit with the question: what happens when the worst thing you can imagine is caused by your own lapse?

By the end, you are left hollowed out, but also in awe of how cinema, at its best, can make you feel something so profoundly.

Father (Otec) had its World Premiere at the Venice Film Festival on August 28, 2025, in Orizzonti.