film directed by Petr Schulhoff

Adventures of the "How to Rip Whale Tooth" (1977) heroes continue... The story takes place in the countryside, where little Vashko's dad takes him and his mother, and where another surprise awaits them: not only an excellent holiday in the setting of a rock town, but also the figure of a grandfather, understanding all the dangerous beliefs in the turbulent surface of the renewed relationship of the three closest people. Vasek's other wish comes true - his dad teaches him the secrets of rock climbing. This shared passion, however, causes further conflicts between the two parents - much to the chagrin of both Vasek and his grandfather.

Based on the only extensive prose work by the surrealist painter Josef Capek, Shades of Fern most resembles the philosophical fairy tales and fables of Josef’s older brother, the legendary Czech novelist and playwright Karel Capek. Two young poachers, more boys than men, kill a gamekeeper when they are caught illegally hunting. Panicked, they retreat into a forest that grows steadily more forbidding and deadly as their fear for the future—and guilt over their action—mounts. Loosely based on hundreds of oral folk tales and legends that haunt the woods of Czechoslovakia, Vlácil’s contemporary updating artistically underscores the relationship between man and nature, crime and punishment, isolation and society, and guilt and memory.