Protector (2009 film)

Protector Czech Protektor is a 2009 Czech film directed by Marek Najbrt. It is a story of Hana and Emil Vrbata, a couple living in Germanoccupied Czechoslovakia, in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, during World War II. The general reception by the Czech press and the audience was extremely positive. It was selected as the Czech Republics submission for Best Foreign Language Film at the 82nd Academy Awards.

As the filming of the film within a film is on the verge of completion, we see the two actors riding stationery bicycles with a moving image in the background. As was the usual practice in creating films in earlier days, the illusion of motion is created when the moving image flickers in the background but the object in the foreground is static. Thus, the bicyclist becomes a symbol for the man who pedals furiously but is actually going nowhere. That man is the Czech everyman of 1938 who desperately wishes to escape his tragic circumstances but in reality remains motionless, trapped by the forces of tyranny. Throughout the film, we catch glimpses of the films protagonist, Emil, pedaling furiously, superimposed over the screens larger canvas.Hana is married to Emil, a journalist, who is conscripted by collaborating Czech officials, to serve as a radio announcer for the occupying German forces. A colleague at the radio station, Franta, will not keep quiet and he is taken away presumably by the Gestapo and later executed. Emil, no hard core collaborator, chooses to accept the job working as the mouthpiece for the Nazis in order to save his wife from being deported to the death camps. Emils boss at the radio station is a Nazi sympathizer who offers him the job with the agreement that no one will bother him about his wife as long as she remains holed up in their apartment. ........

Source: Wikipedia