Leaving May 1

Directed by Ester Krumbachová | 75 mins | 1970
The lone directorial effort of Ester Krumbachová, better known as a scriptwriter ("Daisies", "Valerie and Her Week of Wonders") and costume designer, is a barbed, blissfully bizarre feminist satire released amidst the flowering of political and artistic liberation that was the “Prague Spring,” concerned with a fortysomething woman and her relationship with a childhood friend—surname “Devil”—who has aged into a crass glutton, his presence tolerated only because he represents her last hope for marriage. Co-written with enfant terrible Jan Němec, "Murdering the Devil" is a visually dynamic depiction of the grudge match battle of the sexes, and a pantheon work of the Czechoslovak New Wave.