The Rolling Stones have inspired plenty of films over the years — among them, Martin Scorsese’s concert film Shine a Light (2008) and the Maysles Brothers’ Gimme Shelter (1970), which documented the chaos of the band’s 1969 U.S. tour and its bloody culmination at Altamont. Now a Czech filmmaker is adding a very different chapter to that canon.
Writer-director Tomáš Hodan is developing The Stones Are Rolling to Prague (Kameny se valí do Prahy), a period comedy built around one of the most unlikely and celebrated concerts in post-Communist history. Hodan, known for the 2022 historical drama The Last Race and Film Adventurer Karel Zeman, pitched the project Monday at the second edition of the KVIFF Central Stage showcase during Karlovy Vary International Film Festival‘s Industry Days, a showcase dedicated to features from established directors with strong festival pedigrees.
Set in the spring of 1990, just after the Velvet Revolution, the film follows four friends who once organized underground concerts of banned bands during the Communist era. Now, with the country suspended between euphoria and chaos, they receive an offer from President Václav Havel they can’t refuse: organize a Rolling Stones concert in Czechoslovakia.
