Trailer for the documentary Vera 68.
The central figure of Olga Sommerová’s newest movie is the most successful Czechoslovak sportswoman of all time, gymnast Věra Čáslavská. The holder of seven gold and four silver Olympic medals reached the peak of her career at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City when she was named the second most popular woman on the planet after Jackie Kennedy. After signing the anti-regime manifesto The Two Thousand Words, her enforced social decline began, not ending until the Velvet Revolution and her work as advisor to President Vaclav Havel. Fate dealt her another blow in the form of a family tragedy when her son Martin was convicted of involuntary manslaughter against his father Josef Odložil; Čáslavská suffered a nervous breakdown and spent 16 years out of the public eye. The rise and fall of the recipient of Japan’s highest state honor is brought to life through archive footage, photographs, interviews, but also via shots of a trip which Olga Sommerová took with Věra Čáslavská to her beloved Mexico.