Helena Trestikova's film is a remarkable documentary tracing fourteen years in the life of a young junkie and her futile battle with drug addiction. Why did she start taking drugs? She claims she wanted to be different. The year is 1996 and 19-year-old Katka lives in the Sananim therapy community in the town of Nemcice with hope for a normal life – she dreams of having a boyfriend and even a family, some day. But there's no happy ending. The director records Katka's descent over the years into a spiral of theft, prostitution, physical and psychological deterioration – a spiral that is broken only by brief flashes of hope and resolutions to stop taking drugs. Katka's desire is sincere, but in the end drugs always win. Will Katka finally find the strength when she becomes pregnant and motherhood offers her life-sustaining motivation?
Helena Trestikova graduated from the Department of Documentary Film at FAMU, Prague. Since l974 she has worked as a professional documentary filmmaker, and has made around fifty documentary films of various lengths and formats, mostly on the themes of human relationships and various social issues. Later on she started to specialize on so called time-lapse documentaries – long term observation of peopleґs destiny. Since winter 2002 she became a professor at FAMU, Documentary department. Last years she started to closely cooperate with Negativ production, that produced in 2007 Helena Trestikova's documentary Marcela. A film was awarded „Best Czech documentary“ prize in Pilsen 2007 and also in Sevilla IFF the prize for the „Best European documentary“.
