Memory Burn

A thirteen-year-old boy, Přerov, the early 2000s. A place where everyone knows everyone, but closeness often means loneliness and anxiety rather than support. An absent father, a silent mother, the authority of the grandmother and grandfather. The budding realization that you are different in an environment that does not accept you. A small town as a collective organism, a force that shapes a person, yet also a source of trauma that fuels the desire to escape. Out of fear, you disappear, heading for the big city, but the past won’t let you go. The thought of returning terrifies you. Your grandfather’s death forces you to return to the places you wanted to leave behind forever. You have no choice. Perhaps you’ll discover it’s no big deal, that you can simply overcome your memories. Is it even possible to escape the places that shaped you?

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This adaptation of Marek Torčík’s autofictional novel Rozložíš paměť (Memory Burn), winner of the 2024 Magnesia Litera Award for Prose, explores the theme of coming of age against a backdrop of social inequality, latent racism, and homophobia. Memory is fragile and unreliable, but some moments remain etched forever. Director Ondřej Štefaňák and the author of the original work, Marek Torčík, share a similar life story: both grew up in small Moravian towns and both moved to Prague. The production is thus not merely an intimate exploration of a single memory, but a statement about the search for identity, the courage to tell one’s own story, and the fear of returning to places that both shape and wound a person.