Erich von Däniken: "Mystery and meaning of life is a brilliant film that the whole world must see!'

One of the longest-running films in modern Czech history in terms of realization and post-production Secrets and meaning of life offers future viewers its first teaser. Despite the advertised Jan Budař in the lead role, the central character of Petr Vachler's entire more than two-hour opus seems to be the animated Bumblebee (he is the only face of the film's official poster, after all). In the teaser, he symbolically opens the curtains of the individual story lines, and the quality of the animation of this unconventional plot guide is without a doubt convincing.

The many years of work of the animators on a demanding multi-genre project points to the uniqueness of the project. As one of them, Marek Náprstek, says: "I think the project is unique in that it combines a number of techniques and formats and, above all, that it is a distinctly original project, which really doesn't happen on this scale."

The teaser footage hints at why The Secret and the Meaning of Life is being hailed as perhaps the most expensive and production-intensive independent film of the post-apocalypse era. It is a fact that it was created for more than ten years without a single grant, without financial support from a fund, without a partner who would make his investment conditional on co-deciding on the final form of the film. The success or failure of a work rests entirely with its author.

The teaser does not yet show any of the several dozen world personalities of spiritual growth whose faces should appear in the film (eg Deepak Chopra, Raymond Moody, Dan Millman, Don Miguel Ruiz, Mabel Katz, etc.). Those who had the opportunity to see the film in test screenings already know that the mentioned personalities are not in the form of classic talking heads. Director Vachler integrated the talking heads into the filmed scenery and thus created a visually unique, original mosaic, a completely new form of film story. According to the reactions and expressions of the majority of viewers from these test screenings, he managed to maintain the continuity and attractiveness of the ongoing plot even when combining different forms.

As Petr Vachler claims, he tried to answer the deeper questions of human existence with a script, some episodes of which actually happened and where everything is commented on by people much more educated and experienced in life than himself. It is important for him that in many moments of the plot, the audience finds fragments of their own stories. He was pleased when one of the viewers declared after the screening that "this film will change lives", or when the French producer Johnny Tokatlian compared the film to the Milky Way of life and the Czech artist Kamil Malý to a two and a half hour advertisement for real life.

It is, of course, a question of how the audience will react in wide distribution. We will have to wait for that until the autumn of this year (premiere is 23.11.2023). In selected cities, however, viewers can expect extraordinary pre-premieres in June and then in the fall of this year.

The film traveled with the creators to the Cannes festival in May, where they will try to attract attention and find a way to foreign distribution in a special screening for invited guests as part of the Marché Du Film.

You can buy tickets for the first special previews of the film at eshop.tajemstviasmyslzivota.cz. Come and see if it is. This is followed by a lecture and discussion with the author of the film Petr Vachler!