| Director: | Matěj Chlupáček |
| Producer: | Matěj Chlupáček |
| Starring: | Eliška Křenková |
| Music: | Simon Goff |
| Cinematography: | Martin Douba |
| Editing: | Pavel Hrdlička |
| Distributor: | Bontonfilm |
| Country: | Czech Republic Slovakia |
| Language: | Czech |
| Runtime: | 117 minutes |
| Budget: | 90 million CZK[1] |
| Gross: | 7,783,801 CZK[2] |
We Have Never Been Modern (Czech: '''Úsvit''' literally Dawn) is a 2023 Czech and Slovak crime drama film directed by Matěj Chlupáček and written Miro Šifra. We Have Never Been Modern is Chlupaček's second feature film, defined by him as "a detective story with a female protagonist who is not a police officer or an investigator, but while everyone else draws conclusions according to what suits them, she is the only one who wants to find out the truth". The film title quotes the eponymous book by French philosopher Bruno Latour.[3]
The plot is set in 1937. A married couple, a pregnant former medicine student and a factory director, arrive in the Slovak town of Svit in Spiš Region. They were together with other Bata employees tasked by building a new town modeled after Zlín. However, the plan is thwarted by a mysterious discovery on the factory premises. Among other things, the mysterious story focuses on the themes of intersexuality, especially the relatively unexplored topic of hermaphroditism at the time. It also deals more generally with the topic of otherness and exclusion, in which Helena Hauptová finds herself as a woman in a purely male and male-dominated environment.[4] In this environment, she is the only one interested in uncovering the truth, while the others come to terms with the story of sabotage suspected by communist elements in the factory.[5]
Filming began in May 2022 in Lysá nad Labem in the period scenery of the villa there. Filming ended in September 2022, the film was initially set to enter theatres on November 16, 2023.[6] It premiered on 1 July 2023 during Karlovy Vary International Film Festival with theatrical premiere on 5 October 2023.[7] [8]