Mr. and Mrs. Stodola is a film based on a true story about a married couple Jaroslav and Dana Stodola, where at the instigation the cold-blooded wife turned her man into a serial killer, and the woman's hands didn't remain clean blood either. They committed gruesome acts between 2001 and 2002, starting with the murder of a pensioner and escalating from there onwards. Ultimately, both murderers received life sentences, leaving behind eight murders on their conscience, in addition to smaller crimes, totaling 17 charges against them.
The film tracks the evolution of the murderers into criminals through their own eyes. It's not just a typical courtroom drama, the audience is brought into the criminals home, bed, and tangled relationships. The atmosphere is bleak, depicting a poor, Soviet-era village life that's all too familiar in Eastern Europe. In this regard, the Estonian audience can largely relate, as in some areas of our country, only pensioners remain, and everything is in a quiet decay and decline. Besides the setting, the film sharply portrays the maniacal nature of a psychopath, their chaotic emotional palette, callousness, and fragility.
The film is directed by 40-year-old Czech Petr Hátle, who studied philosophy and film history in Prague and has previously worked on short films and documentaries. "Mr. and Mrs. Stodola" is his first feature-length film. I asked him a few questions.

The story is based on true events, your movie portrays two serial killers. Please tell us why you picked that story for your debut feature film, what was your purpose to tell the audience? Please describe the process how you picked the topic and formed the story.

The case of the Stodolas is a part of the Czech collective memory, having strongly resonated with the public twenty years ago. It wasn't just because it was a shocking series of murders, but particularly because their victims were lonely old folks living in the countryside, on the periphery of society's interest. The murdering couple eluded justice for a long time because the priorities of the police apparatus were elsewhere.
What interested me the most about the case was the relationship between the married couple, the fateful connection that set the whole killing machine in motion. The strong bond, the interdependence, the power dynamic of manipulation, the submission and the inability to live without each other. At the extreme, I think their relationship demonstrates the risks of toxic relationships that we see around us or in which we ourselves live.

Did you go and meet the murderers in prison? Why? Please describe the experience.
Right from the start I decided that neither I nor the actors want to meet with them personally. Based on access to the police files, video documentation from the murder reconstructions, and our own personal experiences with partnerships, we built our own Mr. and Mrs. Stodola. It will perhaps remain a mystery to us forever to what extent the characters in our film are similar to their real-life counterparts.

In Czech you are known as a documentary maker. Why did you decide to make a feature film and not tell their story as a documentary? You did write the scenario, how closely did you follow the real events and how much did you put into your story your own thoughts and interpretation? Percentage-wise - how much really happened and how much is made up by your imagination?
As a documentary maker I always like to be as close to reality as possible, observing things and being part of them. At the same time, my previous documentary works have often been labelled by audiences or critics as borderline in terms of genre - I like working with stylisation and have the characters repeat situations or play out situations that happened in the past in front of the camera. The line between documentary and fictional film is very thin and is very difficult to delineate in contemporary cinema.
Mr. and Mrs. Stodola is certainly more of a fictional film than my previous works, but it is based on key moments in the lives of real-life figures. There are many details in the film that correspond exactly to the description in the police files. We shot at real locations of abandoned homes in places where the murders took place. But I can't judge how much the resulting film is close to reality. Maybe we could show it to the Stodolas and ask them.

How was the casting for the movie? What did you seek in actor/actress of main characters, did you go through with long search or did you have someone in mind already when working on scenario? Working with actors - was there any obstacles, what was the hardest or most emotional thing to do?
I knew that the key would be casting the female lead. The character of Dana had to have the strength and persuasiveness to mould the world around her as needed. She also needed a touch of irony and clownishness, the ability to transform and play with her own identity. Lucie Žáčková, a well-known theatre actress, ticked off all these boxes. Jan Hájek, who plays Jaroslav, was her husband for a short time some twenty years ago. Their marriage only lasted about a week, but they are still very close, their relationship is very intense and they act together in several theatre shows.
Before we started filming, I had never worked with actors before. In fact I didn't even know any. So there was no method behind our collaboration on my part. We were mainly united by a shared passion for the cause, a combination of loving cooperation and duelling. When Lucie Žáčková's committed performance led to her breaking her arm in one violent scene, it was confirmation for me I'd made the right choice.

Please describe your method of filming - your artistic decisions, how to shoot the movie (camera on hand, natural lightning etc). Did you have any role models among other movies or movie-makers? Did you try different things at first or was it clear how to make it from the first moments?
I worked on the film with cinematographer Prokop Souček, who has been producing the visual component of my films since we studied together at Prague's film school FAMU. We decided that we would do it the way we had in our previous documentary projects. Handheld camera, a minimum of lighting and being as close to the characters as possible – this is how we always did it and there was no reason to change it.
A large part of the film takes place at night, so we did several tests before we started filming to see how much the lighting could be limited so there would still be something to see on the screen. In the end though, our favourite scene is where Dana is asking her fiancé to marry her: it takes place on a road at night in between fields and it's so dark that we can't see either of their faces. Which is beautiful.

Do you remember yourself reading the news while these murderers were catched and sentenced? How was it in real life in czech media, what were the reactions among people? Is there any other movies made about the Stodolovi case? Books written, TV-shows in Czech television?
The Stodola case was heavily covered in the media. It was a case that became part of the collective memory of Czech society. A documentary series about their case was made for Czech Television.

You also do crime podcasts? Please tell us a bit about the podcast series.
I made an eight-episode crime podcast called Pohřešovaná [Missing Person]. It's about a mysterious case that took place twenty-five years ago. A fourteen-year-old girl was riding her bike to visit her aunt in the next village over. She never got there. She was lost without a trace and to date the case has never been solved. As if she just disappeared. Even the intensive investigations, renewed every year, never produced a clear explanation of what happened. In the podcast I followed how her disappearance affected the lives of her family, schoolmates and even the police officers who worked on the case. I was interested in how we cope with tragic events that have no apparent cause or resolution.

Did you do the filming during pandemic? How was that experience? Please describe. What do you like about making movies, what part of it? Please describe the passion.
The pandemic had a severe impact on filming. We had to interrupt it twice. Naturally it was an enormous complication, especially from a production point of view. But somehow we all understood that the world is in crisis and the shooting of our little film will just have to adapt.

What are your plans for the future? Do you plan to stick with feature-films or go back to documentaries? Will there be any other crime-stories or would you rather try some other genre?
Currently I'm wrapping up a five-part true crime series for a Czech VOD platform. It's about a controversial criminal case in which a father from a small Czech town was accused of electrocuting his wife and young daughter while on vacation in Egypt. He was sentenced to 28 years, but he never confessed and the manner of his conviction has drawn much criticism.
It's my last crime story. After years spend examining all different aspects of crime, I'd like to look for a new topic. Right now I'm working on the script for a coming-of-age drama that takes place in the communist 1980s in the semi-illegal first Czech gay club. It's a film that is primarily about love, joie de vivre and friendship – there's no murder in it so far.

Please tell us one wise advice that you would tell to your child - what is important in life?
Love your neighbour as yourself.