Introduction by Irena Kovarova on May 27

Adapted by Krumbachová and director Jaromil Jireš from a novel by surrealist writer Vítězslav Nezval, this lushly stylized horror fantasia overflows with both dreamy bucolic beauty and macabre menace. In a gothic storybook universe, 13-year-old Valerie (Jaroslava Schallerová) tumbles through the looking glass into a phantasmagoric realm of vampires, black magic, and pagan sexuality where fanged grandmothers feast on children and incestuous fathers transform into weasels. A dark fairy-tale evocation of adolescent anxiety, Valerie and Her Week of Wonders takes its place alongside the Krumbachová-scripted Daisies as one of the major works of the Czechoslovak New Wave to center female subjectivity.