Over the course of one night, Ludvik (Radoslav Brzobohatý) and his wife Anna (Jiřina Bohdalová), succumb to the paranoia, fear, and potential reality of the world they now find themselves in. The couple return home from a State dinner, and, once in their darkened house, Ludvik begins to piece together the puzzle of the evening and of previous events, eventually coming to the realisation that the pair may be in great danger. With their relationship already crumbling, the pressure of The Ear listening in may be too much for both of them to survive the night. 

Thrillingly paranoid and infamously banned for twenty years after its completion, Karel Kachyňa’s The Ear has become a standout of the Czech New Wave for its exploration on the corruption of political power in Soviet controlled Czechoslovakia. This copy comes to us digitally restored from the National Film Archive in Prague.