With films that reflect on life in contemporary Eastern Europe, Czech filmmaker Jana Ševcíková has distinguished herself as a practitioner of poetic documentary. A graduate of the Prague Film Academy, her thesis film, Piemule (1984), offers a frank examination of Czech émigrés in Romania during the final years of Ceausecu‘s totaltitarian regime. She has produced films independently, such as Jakub (1992), and received state funding from the Czech Ministry of Culture. Her films have been shown at festivals in Berlin, Strasbourg, Karlovy Vary and Cracow. Praised throughout Europe, Ševčíková‘s intimately crafted works challenge the distanced conventions of ethnographic filmmaking.