Ztracená dovolená (Lost Holiday) (2006)

Czech helmer Lucie Kralova's investigative documentary Lost Holiday begins with an odd and haunting mystery. In 2001, Lada Jelenik, an itinerant Czech woman traveling through Sweden, happened upon a s... read more uitcase with a plastic bag inside, that encompassed 22 rolls of film. Fascinated, Jelenik developed the material, and discovered neither scandal nor evidence of international conspiracy, but 756 photographs of several utterly sober and joyless Asian men standing in banal European locations. Incredibly curious about their identities, origins and reasons for snapping so many photographs, Jelenik began to ponder the answers to these questions. Meanwhile, filmmaker Kralova caught wind of the story, felt intrigued and decided to set up an exhibit in a Prague museum in which visitors could pose with life-size blow-ups of the gentlemen, situated in the middle of a field of yellow flowers; this failed to satisfy, however, and in time, Kralova sent several "search teams" out to locate and interrogate the subjects, cameras-in-hand. That material - and the search that led the filmmakers to China and the gentlemen in question, ultimately revealing their identities - forms the basis of this documentary. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi