North-American premiere of the film Hotel Sunrise will be at the Canadian International Documentary Festival Hot Docs on April, 29. At the same time, the documentary by Mária Rumanová is running for the audience award for the mid-length film.
The author follows the stories of four protagonists living near a defunct rail transhipment station at the Slovak-Ukrainian border. All four tries to strive to break the vicious, immutable cycle of life on the social periphery, armed only with their unwavering desire for happiness. Desire alone does not guarantee success, nor the propriety of the protagonist's decisions. The characters in this film find their own ways to navigate the dysfunctional system, often skittering along the edge of the law and common sense, but their stories are all the more genuine, expressive, and human. Their everyday life is the town of Čierna nad Tisou - once called the 'Golden gate of socialism', now little more than a smuggling den at the Eastern European border.