Once I got in, it was hard to get out

Ida is cleaning out the house where her grandfather, an artist, used to live. She wades through a studio overflowing with artefacts, oddities, and lost history. Similar to S P A C E S, Štrbová explores the themes of memory and loss, combining fiction and documentary, letting images of nostalgic childhood and a suffocating past flow associatively. Set to the sound of Francesco Geminiani’s Concerto grosso no. 12, subtitled Madness, the fragile physicality of both dead and living relics stands out. The head of a dead parrot, a cast of her grandmother’s breasts, or a moss-covered real estate agent become discoveries of a personal archaeological site and exhibits in an introspective museum of family history.

Director: Nora Štrbová

Nora Štrbová (1994) is a Czech-Slovak artist and filmmaker, born in Bratislava. She studied animation and documentary directing at FAMU in Prague. Her works include SPACES (2020), an animated short documentary that premiered at Visions du Réel and was later presented at IDFF and the Poitiers Film Festival; Once I Got In, It Was Hard to Get Out (2024), which premiered in the Czech Joy national competition at Jihlava IDFF and won the Best Sound Design award; and most recently, What If We Run Out of Stones? (2025), which premiered at Visions du Réel. She is also the author of music videos and animated jingles such as Distress, which premiered at Annecy in 2020.