A quartet of bored schoolteachers in Moravia decide to liven things up by indulging in an alcohol-fueled experiment in Another Round (Pod parou), a Czech remake of Thomas Vinterberg‘s Oscar-winning 2020 drama now playing in Prague cinemas. This second round trades in the original’s male cast for women, but otherwise serves up a scene-for-scene facsimile so close in story, tone, and spirit there’s little value for anyone who remembers the earlier film. Still, Vinterberg’s story is strong enough to shine through, making this a potentially rewarding experience for those coming in fresh.
2025’s Another Round stars Hana Vagnerová in the lead role previously filled by Mads Mikkelsen: her history teacher Martina drones on monotonously during class, failing to engage her senior students, and she’s confronted by concerned parents who fear their children are unprepared for upcoming exams. Her home life is little better: husband (Jiří Havelka) is cool and distant, and rarely home, hinting at third-act developments that will be obvious even for those who haven’t seen the original.
At a ritzy dinner in an upscale Mikulov estate, Martina confronts these issues with colleagues and friends Vlasta (Zuzana Bydžovská), Nikol (Alžbeta Ferencová), and Petra (Judit Pecháček). And even though she doesn’t intend to drink, she indulges in a fine vintage from the local Sonberk winery, kicking off Another Round‘s central thesis. Just in case you didn’t get it, and in a rare digression from Vinterberg’s film, director Rudolf Biermann throws some underwater sound effects on Martina’s first sip (the film’s Czech title of Pod parou, slang for being buzzed, literally translates as Under steam).
During dinner, Petra brings up Norwegian psychiatrist Finn Skårderud’s theory that humans are born with a deficiency in their blood alcohol level of 0.05%, and thus operate at peak efficiency with a mild buzz. Unrelated to this film, but amusing to note: the real-life Skårderud was stripped of his medical license due to professional misconduct and pled guilty to fraud since the release of the original film in 2020.
Feeling good after that first glass of wine, Martina suggests that the quartet put the theory into practice. Spinster Vlasta, who already seems to be regularly indulging, is happy to join in; young mom Nikol and single music teacher Petra need only a little push. Martina—and those around her—see some immediate improvement with a mild buzz, so she decides to take the experiment even further.
The original film was at its best in its ambiguous attitude towards drinking: alcohol was neither the cause of, nor solution to, life’s problems, but perhaps an impetus towards, or reflection of, both. The Czech version of Another Round could have easily turned into an advertisement for Mikulov’s wineries, or an anti-alcohol diatribe, but screenwriter Roman Olekšák, working from Vinterberg’s original script, deserves praise for maintaining the rich complexities of the earlier film.
Director Biermann, meanwhile, hews far too close to the style of the original movie in visual terms. Like a fine wine, Vinterberg’s craft has developed richly over the years, with his trademark handheld camerawork and natural lighting steadily maturing from his Dogme 95 days into something more palatable for general audiences. In efforts to replicate that, cinematography from Martin Štrba (Masaryk, Charlatan) here feels flat, dull, and underlit, betraying the natural beauty of the film’s Mikulov setting. Brief handheld sequences are almost headache-inducing. The story of the original film has been successfully ported over—but the art has been lost in translation.
It’s the four strong female performances that help set this one apart. Bydžovská steals her scenes as the cagey Vlasta, and Ferencová is a standout as a mother to young children who, perhaps, has more to lose here than the other characters. Vagnerová is engaging in the lead, but too often tasked with mimicking Mikkelsen from the earlier movie—including a final dance sequence that copies him move-for-move. In sequences like this, the Czech version of Another Round doesn’t feel like a remake or even restaging of the original work, but an attempt at xerox-like reproduction.
There should be something interesting here to say about these characters being women as opposed to men: how does society view alcohol consumption between the two? But this take on Another Round is content to swap the genders and provide no additional insight; it even trots out the exact same male alcoholic prototypes of Ernest Hemingway, Winston Churchill, Ulysses S. Grant (!), and others. Women, it seems, don’t tend to be as celebrated for their consumption.
While the Czech version of Another Round benefits from strong performances and a solid narrative framework, it never steps out of the earlier film’s shadow. The gender-swapped premise offers the potential for fresh insight, but the film ultimately delivers a near-identical retelling that lacks distinctive voice. This one may go down smooth for local audiences, but it leaves little to savor for those who’ve already tasted the Danish original.
