Synopsis
Czech composer Hanz Sedlář leaves the certainty of his studio with a clear goal: to compose a cycle of symphonic poems inspired by water. To do so, he must experience it directly — not as metaphor, but as glacier, forest, farmland, river, and city.
Across four seasons, Hanz travels through Central European landscapes shaped by water and increasingly marked by its instability. Guided by experts, he climbs to melting alpine glaciers, rises in a hot-air balloon above their river sources, walks through rain-soaked forests in the Czech Republic, crosses overheated agricultural land, and kayaks through a Slovak metropolis. Scientific insight gradually reframes what he sees: water is not only beauty and rhythm, but a sensitive system under pressure from climate change, land use, and urbanization.
As composition progresses, detachment becomes impossible. What began as artistic research evolves into a personal confrontation with responsibility. In the final movement, Hanz performs the completed symphonic poems with his orchestra for the experts who guided him — reversing roles and transforming knowledge into shared reflection.
Portrait of Water is a film about translation — from science into sensation, from landscape into music — and about the quiet but urgent question that emerges when observation is no longer enough.
Across four seasons, Hanz travels through Central European landscapes shaped by water and increasingly marked by its instability. Guided by experts, he climbs to melting alpine glaciers, rises in a hot-air balloon above their river sources, walks through rain-soaked forests in the Czech Republic, crosses overheated agricultural land, and kayaks through a Slovak metropolis. Scientific insight gradually reframes what he sees: water is not only beauty and rhythm, but a sensitive system under pressure from climate change, land use, and urbanization.
As composition progresses, detachment becomes impossible. What began as artistic research evolves into a personal confrontation with responsibility. In the final movement, Hanz performs the completed symphonic poems with his orchestra for the experts who guided him — reversing roles and transforming knowledge into shared reflection.
Portrait of Water is a film about translation — from science into sensation, from landscape into music — and about the quiet but urgent question that emerges when observation is no longer enough.
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