On January 23, 2016, the Archa Theatre in Prague hosted the traditional evening of Czech Film Critics Awards, which annually draw attention to the past year's best films and point out the rising stars of Czech cinematography from the professional film journalists' point of view. In the documentary category, the film Lean a Ladder Against Heaven by Jana Ševčíková was announced the Best Documentary. The film was a part of East Silver Market 2014 and supported within East Silver Caravan 2015 festival service.
„In 2008, when I read a newspaper article about a priest, who helps the socially excluded people, I had a thought that it would make an interesting topic for a film,“ says the experienced Czech director Jana Ševčíková in an interview for IDF about the first steps which led her to the making of the successful documentary. It was presented ad many festivals, including Karlovy Vary IFF and Jihlava IDFF and has already been awarded The Pavel Koutecký Award for the best documentary and the Trilobit Award for an outstanding contribution on the audiovisual field.
The main character of the film is the charismatic catholic priest Marián Kuffa, who lives in a small village Žakovce in Slovakia and takes care of a numerous community of socially excluded people. A former mountaineer and an avid horse lover dedicated his life to an effort to help the homeless, drug addicts or people freshly released from prison to get back on their own feet thanks to work and faith. An as can be seen from the story that the director had been working on for five long years, he is very successful at that.
