A RECORD number of people saw the documentary film titled 38 about deceased ice hockey player Pavol Demitra during its opening weekend. The film, directed by Daniel Dangl, attracted 49,314 people, which is the most of any Slovak film’s premiere in recent years, the SITA newswire reported.
The documentary, which premiered on September 11, was meant to honour the Slovak ice hockey legend, who died in a plane crash near the city of Yaroslavl in central Russia on September 7, 2011. It contains unpublished pictures from Demitra’s childhood, photos of his closest family, items from his early hockey career and summaries from videos of his matches in the US and Russia, and several recordings from TV archives.
Part of the film also consists of interviews with Demitra’s father, sisters and wife Mária Demitrová. She even accompanied the filmmakers to the site of the tragedy. The film contains commentary from various current and former ice hockey players, like Marián Gáborík, Michal Handzuš, Marián Hossa, Zdeno Chára, Tomáš Kopecký, Keith Tkachuk, Jeremy Roenick, Miroslav Šatan and Peter Šťastný, TASR wrote.
The scenes are accompanied by Slovak music, which was chosen deliberately by the film’s creators since Demitra was said to have liked Slovak music the most. Among his most favourite bands was Iné Kafe, which even dedicated its song Čiernobiela (Black-and-White) to him.
