Třinácté okno – Dušková Vlasta (2022)

What can one human life hold? Love and hatred, hope as well as the blows of fate. Albína experiences all of this herself. Born the daughter of a wealthy and popular farmer, she soon loses her mother, and her new stepmother turns her life into hell. She finds no support in her infatuated father or in her brother, whom hatred drives into the hands of self-serving lawyers. Her stepmother continues to make Albína’s life miserable with hundreds of small humiliations, eventually arranging a loveless marriage and depriving her of the family inheritance. Albína never gives up, however. She devotes all her willpower to keeping her new family together and happy, despite wartime shortages, the cruellest losses, and the personal demons of her husband and those closest to her. This Czech-language family saga spans half of the twentieth century, following the fate of a courageous woman from the end of the monarchy through the years of communist dictatorship. Albína refuses to bow and perseveres, becoming an example to others: a rural Amazon whose strength and determination help others triumph even when victory seems impossible.