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Restore Point

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Central Europe, 2041. With violent crime on the rise, a new technology called Restore Point enables all citizens to be revived from unnatural deaths, so long as they back up their mind’s data at least once every 48 hours. Indefatigable loner detective Em Trochinowska (Andrea Mohylová) investigates the murders of one of the Restore Point Institute’s head scientists, David Kurlstat (Matej Hádek) and his wife Kristina. When Kurlstat turns up alive with a six-month memory gap– tenuously revived through an unstable and illegally outdated back-up– he joins Trochinowska in pursuing her prime suspect for the murders: Viktor Toffer (Milan Ondrík), a hacker with ties to a Luddite terrorist cell with whom Trochinowska herself has a personal score to settle. Upon discovering that Toffer has unleashed a virus capable of wiping out thousands of Restore Point backup data sets, Trochinowska closes in on a deeper conspiracy.

Director Robert Hloz’s impressive sci-fi thriller feature debut explores questions of consciousness in an imaginative and stunningly rendered dystopian cityscape where death has taken on an entirely new meaning.

Hloz’s world-building—in a film that’s a cross between Minority Report and Blade Runner—is gripping.
RogerEbert.com

 

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Director
Cast

Andrea Mohylová, Matěj Hádek, Václav Neužil, Milan Ondrík, Karel Dobrý

Credits
Country of Origin

Czech Republic/Slovakia/Poland/Serbia

Year

2023

Series

Altered States

Language

In Czech with English subtitles

19+
111 min
Drama Horror & Thriller

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Credits

Producer

Jan Kallista, Pavel Berčík, Silvie Michajlova, Karla Stojáková, Ondřej Zima

Screenwriter

Tomislav Čečka, Zdeněk Jecelín, Robert Hloz

Cinematography

Filip Marek

Editor

Jarosław Kamiński

Production Design

Ondřej Lipenský

Original Music

Jan Šléška

Director

Robert Hloz headshot

Robert Hloz

Robert Hloz (1989) is a filmmaker based in Prague, Czech Republic. He studied film directing at the film school in South Korea and FMK UTB in Zlín, Czech Republic. His early short film The Mill won Kodak Student Gold Award 2011 as the best short film of a year. Numbers was nominated for Czech Academy Award. In 2015, he directed Liars, a short film about a group of boys that hide the discovery of a dead body. In 2020 he won the Straight 8 section in Cannes with his last short film Crumbs.

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