The Czechoslovakian government's program of forced sterilization of Roma women is exposed in a richly shot, well-intentioned but rather dated drama from director Ivan Ostrochovský.
Plus IconJessica Kiang
See All
Courtesy of Punkchart Films, Karlovy Vary Film Festival The fashions and furnishings of Czechoslovakia in the 1980s — the height of the state’s racist program of suppressing the Roma population through coerced sterilization — are painstakingly evoked in Slovakian filmmaker Ivan Ostrochovský’s “Only Beautiful Things to Look At.” But the film’s attractive yet oddly bloodless presentation gives the impression of a period drama set much farther back, as though we’re peering at the prettily mounted arrowheads and artifacts of a long-gone atrocity through museum glass. Alongside the decision to centralize the perspective of a white female doctor, this old-school, soft-focus approach robs an undeniably well-intentioned movie of a vital edge of urgency and discomfort, allowing viewers to consign the cruelties it outlines to some imaginary distant past, when in truth, the sterilization policy continued well into the 21st century in both the Czech and Slovak Republics.
Related Stories
