Lean a Ladder Against Heaven

Catholic priest Marián Kuffa lives in a small Slovak village below the Tatra Mountains. Over the last twenty years he has transformed his presbytery into a refuge for more than two hundred desperate individuals. Homeless people, alcoholics, drug addicts, youngsters from orphanages, the physically disabled, and the abused. "I feel like I'm on a sinking ship. I pull one out, and another drowns. And where's the life jacket? I leave one barely clinging to a raft, I dislocate another's arm trying to catch him, I grab another by the hair, or by his leg, I pull someone else by his fingers or his elbow. It hurts them and there's no time for niceties; I just try to catch them so they can survive," says Kuffa who, after morning Mass, changes into his overalls in order to spend the whole day working with those in need. This low-key film is not merely a portrait of a selfless man who, at the age of thirty, abandoned his leisure pursuits and the idyll of his formative years and headed out to a Catholic seminary. It also reflects on the complex lives of social outcasts, on mercy, the various forms of faith, and on what it means to give up your life for other people. (Karlovy Vary International Film Festival)