Ms. President [screening + Q&A w/ Marek Šulík]

The Czech Center New York and the Vaclav Havel Center present the US premiere of Ms. President.

For five years, a film crew closely followed Zuzana Čaputová, the first female Slovak president, even in situations where other cameras were not allowed. Political choices, meetings with world leaders over global dilemmas, but also with ordinary citizens over everyday problems. An extraordinarily intimate portrait of a woman who tried to bring a humanly open approach to the traditionally male competitive world of top politics, while fighting the most demanding battle in life at home.

The time-lapse picture of Zuzana Čaputová's five-year term in office is not a celebratory portrait, but a statement about the importance of the office of the head of state and the state of society. Slovakia's first female president takes over the country a year after the murder of investigative journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée at a time of mass protests against the links between high politics and organised crime. The end of her presidency, on the other hand, is marked by the assassination attempt on Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico in 2024. She is faced with a task that goes far beyond her representative function. The president has the power to give hope to a society in crisis, to speak for and protect a part of the public who has not yet been heard, to change the way society is configured by setting a positive example and steering it towards values that are compatible with the liberal West.

However, she does not want to run for another term, and Marek Šulík reveals why. He captures the head of state in less formal situations, in the role of a woman, a mother and a wife who faces gender-based attacks, death threats and fears for her family. The portrait of Čaputová as a public and private figure looks at a society whose leading cultural institutions are currently removing LGBTQ+ works from their repertoire and, like Hungary, Romania or Poland, are thus removing a section of the population from public life and encouraging a mindset that leads to acts like the shooting at a Bratislava gay club in 2022.

“We politicians must have power over our emotions. We have to control our thoughts, because the way we think makes us the kind of people we are. And now, first and foremost, we need to become better people.” -Zuzana Čaputová

Ms.President (Prezidentka)
Marek Šulík / Slovakia, Czechia / 2024 / 108 min. / US Premiere
Slovak with English subtitles

Marek Šulík is a Slovak documentary filmmaker, editor and teacher and a graduate of the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava, where he currently teaches at the Documentary Production Studio. He works with non-profit organizations such as Media 3, Návrat, IVO and Občan a demokracie. He specializes in social issues, and has dealt with Roma issues in the films Cigarettes & Songs (2010), Bells of Happiness (2012) and Heavy Hearth (2017).