Tereza Nvotová’s harrowing feature film Father beguilingly opens with a perfectly choreographed, continuous shot revealing the loving home life of an upper middle-class couple and their young daughter. Michal Rehak is the CEO of a regional Slovakian newspaper, and his wife Zuzka has an equally significant job, but neither allows their demanding work to detract from showering affection on 2-year-old Domi.
The film begins tightly focused on the face of Michal during his morning routine: jogging around the bucolic neighborhood, greeting a neighbor, and checking his watch before running up the exterior stairs of his home onto a green oasis where we first meet his wife and daughter. The camera then alternately follows Michal throughout his preparations for work and Zuzka as she gets Domi ready for daycare. The only difference in today’s routine is that the father, not the mother, will have to drop the child off at daycare.
While the camera is still running continuously, Michal grabs a new child car seat and double-buckles Domi safely in. He feels confident that this is one child seat she can’t unbuckle.
On the road to daycare, Michal and Domi sing along with a CD of “If You’re Happy, Clap Your Hands.” Although Domi was frequently petulant this morning, she and her father are in perfect emotional harmony during the short ride. As Domi soon falls asleep, all is silent in the car and Michal looks lost in thought.
The continuous shot is briefly interrupted by an elderly person pushing their walker slowly across the street as Michal watches, possibly pondering old age and his own mortality, especially since he had discovered a worrisome new spot on his face earlier that morning.
At the daycare, Michal gets out of the car and notices with just a momentary surprise that Domi is immediately by his side before running in to greet her playmates. We don’t see him open the sliding door or even unbuckle her. He waves at one of the caretakers and then proceeds on to his large office building, the continuous long shot proceeding uninterrupted for a while longer.
At work, the film’s tone shifts from familial bliss to tension as it is revealed that his publishing business is facing potential bankruptcy. A new man, who has saved other endangered businesses, has been brought in to suggest what might be done in this era of print publications facing economic downturns worldwide. At some point Michal asks why anyone even needs a regional newspaper when they have smartphones.
The rising tension is echoed by the rising temperature both outdoors and in the office suite with a broken cooling system. While the “numbers guy” Daniel lectures the employees on impending solutions, Michal looks out the window and sees a young boy pouring water over his head in the parking lot. Extreme heat serves as the unseen, but deeply felt, antagonist of the film. We see Michal’s car, but we don’t have any reason to focus on it. Nor does he. We will all soon regret that.
The day goes on. A powerful fan is brought into Michal’s office. Lunch has been served. To escape his worries about his failing business, he has enjoyed watching family videos of trips, parties, and other joyful times with Domi and Zuzka.
That respite is interrupted by Dasa, a longtime employee, who comes into Michal’s office to complain about the distressing salvation of the company. In the midst of Michal’s arguing with her, the phone rings. It is Zuzka asking where Domi is. “Why, at the daycare.” “Well, no, she isn’t.” Instead of continuing to protest, Michal rushes out of his office, down the stairs, out to his car. The camera is strictly focused on his face as he opens the sliding back door and screams in shock and horror. His face and body are contorted as he begins yelling, “I killed her. I killed her!” He collapses to the ground as we see feet rushing by and hear horrified shouts of “She’s dead.”
When we watched the earlier scene in which Domi runs into the daycare center, we were inside Michal’s mind, experiencing a false memory, not reality.
That is how Tereza Nvotová introduces us to the rising worldwide phenomenon of “Forgotten Baby Syndrome.”
In Zac Ntim’s Deadline interview (December 6, 2025), the director explains that film producer Veronika Pastekova told her about a book she had read. Dusan Budzak, who would eventually co-write the screenplay for Father with Nvotová, had earlier written a book about his best friend who had suffered the awful consequences of “forgotten baby syndrome.” Knowing Nvotová’s earlier work, Paštéková thought that the young director might be interested in the topic for a film.
Initially, Nvotová thought that it would be an impossible project to film, that the story was “too tragic to put in a movie.” Furthermore, most people always assumed the death of children in an overheated car was simply caused by negligent, uncaring parents. But the story stuck in her mind, and she did further research into FBS by talking with Dusan Budzak.
She doubtlessly learned something along the lines of what is described elsewhere. A University of South Florida psychology professor explains the “forgotten baby syndrome” as “a consequence of tension between the brain’s habit-memory and prospective-memory systems” (ABC News, July 14, 2016). False memories arise, especially at times of “stress, sleep deprivation, and change in routine.”
Although nothing is said about a potential loss of his business during the early, blissful moments of Father, there were subtle signs of such a fear as he seemed distracted. He was worried by that new spot on his face, and he briefly couldn’t find a particular tie or his phone.
Also, barely noticeable during the scenes of homelife and office life, the soundtrack contains an almost subliminal, relentless thumping noise with no explanation. Perhaps it is Michal’s heart, because it becomes very loud and unavoidable as he rushes out to his car to make his heart-rending discovery.
By choosing a very adventurous (and I dare say athletic and nimble) cinematographer, Adam Suzin, the director found a perfect way to immerse the viewer in the story. We are relentlessly confronted with Michal’s face and body. We can’t really sit back and judge him from afar and think, “I would never be so careless.” We are with him, almost in him, throughout the film as he begins trying to deal with the horrible feeling that he killed his darling daughter. So many of the scenes are in real time with no cuts, no respite, no looking away. By being up close and personal with Michal’s anguish, guilt, and depression, perfectly embodied by actor Milan Ondrik, we suffer along with him.
In fact, many of us must admit that our memories also fail. Otherwise, how to explain leaving keys locked in a car, forgetting to retrieve a credit card from a restaurant, walking from one room into another only to forget what we intended to do there. In such cases, our minds, perhaps even our unconscious minds, were preoccupied with something eating away at our present reality. But locksmiths can be called, we can contact the restaurant to safeguard our credit cards, or we can return to the first room and often remember what we intended to do in the second. However, the guilt felt over leaving a flesh-and-blood baby in a car is too often irremediable even if explained by Forgotten Baby Syndrome.
And that is what Michal and Zuzka grapple with throughout the major portion of the film. The news reporters are relentless in their drumbeat use of phrases like “roasting to death” and “negligent father.”
Besides his overwhelming guilt, Michal also has to face a “criminal investigation into child abandonment.” In the meantime, he suffers, makes a feeble suicide attempt, sinks into daytime hallucinations, and awakes screaming after nightmares.
As nearly all of us now do, Michal turns to the Internet rather than to a priest, a psychiatrist, or grief manager for answers. One night, after flinching from accusatory news articles, he discovers a Pulitzer Prize winner’s article about Forgotten Baby Syndrome. He drags Zuzka out of bed to read it, too.
To know that she understands, even in her half-asleep state, he tries to summarize how the syndrome explains his own actions:
“When you drive, you don’t think about what you’re doing. You’re shifting gears, you’re turning the wheel, it’s all automatic. And then you’re headed to daycare, where you don’t normally go and something distracts you on the way. You start thinking about something else and that’s when the autopilot kicks in and takes you to the place you’re used to going, in my case to the office.”
He recites from the article: “The memory circuits can literally get overwritten, like with a computer program. Unless the memory circuit is rebooted, such as when the child cries, it can entirely disappear.”
While he is initially relieved to finally discover an explanation, which might very well help him begin to loosen the paralyzing grip of guilt, Zuzka
spits out her deepest feeling and explanation: “It happened because you never wanted Dominica in the first place.”
We never know if that was true or not, but the film jumps ahead, about a month and a beard later. Michal has stayed home, listless, medicated, unshaven, and incapable of functioning. Finding a rational explanation for his daughter’s death has not revived him.
Zuzka, on the other hand, shows that she is somehow ready to move on. Michal catches her dancing exuberantly to Alice Smith’s soulful “She.” Shortly thereafter, she informs Michal that they must break up.
She evidently did move out because when Michal’s trial date arrives, we see her enter the courtroom and barely glance at Michal. The trial is grueling even though both Zuzka and Eva, his first wife, testify to Michal’s basic goodness and his undying love for his daughter. The autopsy report provides additional relief – “the child went from sleep to unconsciousness and was dead in 30 minutes.” A neuropsychologist testifies that the child did not die because of a failure of parental love, but “because the father’s brain was on autopilot brought on by stress over the status of his business, which in turn created false memories.”
In answer to an onslaught of simplistic accusations brought by the vocally sneering prosecutor, Michal replies with deep resignation that he doesn’t care what happens to him since life no longer has any meaning.
A short time later Michal discovers a few people at his house rushing about turning out lights and becoming silent. They are not reporters, but employees and a few friends called together by Zuzka to celebrate Michal’s 45th birthday. Wanting no kind of celebration, he sneaks into another part of the house and hides.
But Zuzka finds Michal. They talk and suddenly find themselves kissing and then moving on to passionate lap-dancing sex. She blurts out the golden words, “I want to have a baby.” This is a moment of forgiveness and reconciliation with a nod toward the possibility of new life and renewed marital happiness.
The next morning brings us full loop visually. Michal leaves Zuzka in bed and goes outside to renew his morning routine with a jog around the neighborhood. As he transforms his jogging rhythm into unrestrained running, a smile comes across his face for a brief moment before a contorted grimace. The drone camera lifts ever upward until Michal is simply a mere speck on the thin ribbon of a road snaking through the Slovakian countryside of farms and woods.
Despite the tragic subject matter, Tereza Nvotová and her cast never allowed the film to devolve into melodrama. When the characters cry or yell, they are reacting just as we would. We are not being manipulated into false, momentary emotions accompanied by violins. We are not being led to sympathize, but instead find ourselves deeply empathizing, even becoming, not just understanding, the characters. That is a direct result of the excellent acting and directing.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter (December 29, 2025), Nvotová revealed that she didn’t want to make Michal a victim or a villain, “so I was always trying to walk the edge between these feelings and questions, but without giving the audience answers.”
In a September 5, 2025 interview at the Venice Film Festival, where Father was a film award nominee, she elaborated on her approach to Michal’s character: “I wanted to stay simple, ask questions, empathize, not judge, sometimes even not understand, but be there with him.”
Nvotová further clarifies her approach to the story: “While writing the script, I kept rewriting every scene with one rule in mind: the characters should not say what they feel. Because that’s what we do as humans, especially in crisis or when we’re not well. We rarely articulate it directly; instead, we stay silent or we talk around it. I wanted the film to speak in the language of cinema, so that the viewer experiences what the characters are going through through their actions, interactions, and expressions rather than through dialogue.”
Regarding the visual style of the film, Nvotová worked very closely with her cinematographer Adam Suzin who captured so many unforgettable moments. In Venice she explained: “Adam and I created a very detailed plan for the camera. Every movement, every shot size had its own motive, its own reason. I didn’t want the viewer to feel the camera as some kind of third presence. Instead, we tried to make it mirror the emotional world of the main character – hectic when he feels hectic, smooth and slow when he is exhausted, close with him in intimate moments.”
To date, Nvotová’s brilliant film has won 12 international awards (best film, best lead actor, best director, best cinematographer), including the Cinema Without Borders “Bridging the Border” award at the recent South East European Film Festival of Los Angeles.
Finally, on a personal note. I recently had to replace my 22-year-old car. When I drove the newer car home for the first time and turned off the motor, a message appeared on the instrument panel: “Check the back seat.” I immediately laughed, thinking it was reminding me to take in my groceries. After seeing Father, I no longer laugh.
