Cloudburst

“I loved you for thirty-one years. I loved you when you got fat, I loved you when you went blind,” the tough, romantic Stella professes while proposing to her partner, Dot – and so the two set out on the road, from the American countryside to “somewhere, where it’s legal”: due north to Canada. Stella & Dot are the Thelma & Louise of retirement age, yet lack none of their energy, glib tongue and talent for disasters.They are on the run from the law, and what is worse, from Dot’s granddaughter Molly who wants to put her into a nursing home, getting rid of that obnoxious “friend” of hers Stella. A drifting young stripper hitchhiker joins the women, and with them, approaches the state border in a road movie about a love of great beauty, like the clouds at sunset Stella describes to Dot every night. The film opens the festival in Prague with director Thom Fitzgerald in attendance, whose 1997 The Hanging Garden graces the retrospective section The Dark Kingdom.