Agnieszka Holland’s searing three-part opus recounts the fiery sacrifice of a young Prague student protesting the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1969. 

Hot off her Academy Award nomination for In Darkness (2011), Agnieszka Holland (Spoor, MIFF 2017) was tapped by HBO for this three-part epic that returned her to the Prague Spring of her own youth, a time in which the filmmaker was arrested for supporting the dissident movement in communist Czechoslovakia.

Burning Bush follows the aftermath of those events, when Prague history student Jan Palach set himself on fire to protest the Soviet occupation. Holland’s widely acclaimed, historically rigorous drama tracks the battle for both Palach’s legacy and the values of democracy itself, with a standout performance from Tatiana Pauhofová as Dagmar Burešová, the lawyer fighting on behalf of Palach’s family. The result is one of the director’s most haunting and unmissable works.

“Holland’s film shows passionately, urgently and convincingly that their struggle was both necessary and fully justified.” – Film Comment