Lost in Paradise

Evžen Žabrovský (38) neither has a family nor a secure income. Instead, he has founded his own music club in Prague, the city his father emigrated from in 1968 to escape Communism. His life seems to be at its peak as his nightclub Venuše is a success and he has just started a romance with Anna, a woman that deeply intrigues him. But the love story comes to an abrupt end when Anna realizes that Evžen isn’t ready to give up his freedom-loving bachelor lifestyle. Venuše is everything to Evžen – then one night a fire breaks out and the venue burns down. The landlord threatens Evžen to terminate the contract if Evžen doesn’t pay for the damages within the next 7 days. After the bank denies a loan and the benefit-concert to save Venuše doesn’t pay off, Evžen decides to return back to Switzerland to ask his father for the money. A daring undertaking, as they have had a troubled relationship ever since Evžen moved to Prague. This journey by night train gets off to a bizarre start: Evžen shares his compartment with a man smuggling his pet-crocodile Karlchen to a medical appointment with an old friend in Switzerland. The stranger tells him an anecdote about how a friend escaped Czechoslovakia back in ’68. Evžen has no idea that the man is actually talking about his own father Václav, whose own narrative of his past had always been that of a heroic dissident. Arriving in his hometown, Evžen’s attempts to raise money seem to fail from the start. Neither the rich aunt, nor the Swiss Bank will grant him a loan. And his father, whose expectations Evžen has let down a long time ago, refuses to help him out of principle. The simmering conflict between father and son escalates.