A drama that tells the story of the physician and politician MUDr. František Kriegel, the hero of the Prague Spring of 1968, who was arrested and kidnapped to Moscow on the night of August 21st together with five leaders of the party and the state (Dubček, Černík, Smrkovský, Špaček and Šimon). He was the only Czechoslovak politician who managed to stand up to Brezhnev in Moscow captivity, even under the threat of liquidation, and not to sign the Moscow Protovol which meant agreeing to the occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968.
Acting
Tomáš Töpfer's trembling defiance in Moscow scenes.
Direction
Claustrophobic tension in captivity sequences.
Director
Petr Nikolaev
Tomáš Töpfer
František Kriegel
Zuzana Mauréry
Riva Krieglová
Adrian Jastraban
Gustav Husák
Oleksandr Ihnatusha
Leonid Brezhnev
Alois Švehlík
President Svoboda
Jiří Ployhar
Oldřich Černík
Daniel Heriban
Alexander Dubček
Přemysl Bureš
Josef Smrkovský
Jaroslav Mendel
Vasil Bilak
Zuzana Kajnarová
Zora Hynská
Miroslav Táborský
Dr. Smrčka
Antonín Kala
Drahomír Kolder
Gustav Řezníček
Jan Piller
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Kriegel remains virtually unknown in Czech popular memory—a deliberate Soviet-era erasure that this film finally corrects.
The real Kriegel died in 1979, still politically isolated; Brezhnev reportedly called him 'that Jewish doctor' in private fury.
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