Mandragora [Widescreen] (E)

The director of this film has worked most of the 1990s with the young prostitutes and homeless in Prague, making a series of documentaries examining the development of the sex trade industry in the Czech Republic. The feature length film uses the conventions of melodrama and neo-realism (non-professional actors, real locations) in order to make a powerful statement against the corruption and exploitation of young people in market-obsessed post-Communist Prague. Sixteen year old Mark arrives in Prague after running away from his country town and within hours has begun life as a street prostitute. The film represents a dark labyrinth world where adults prey on children and where the only moments of tenderness rest in the relationships formed between the young boys. But in a world of random violence and theft, of corrupt pornographers and pimps, of desperate drug use and sexual disease, and in a world where the foreign tourist is most often a pedophile, moments of tenderness are few and far between. In Czech with English subtitles.