Mr Sedláček was writing one-sentence entries in his chronicle from 1981 to 2005. The chronicle assembles everyday stories of his and his family's life, the life of the village and its surroundings as well as international events side by side.
Narrating eigthy entries from a total of more than two thousand daily notes the film manages to provide a astonishingly concentrated overview of Mr. Sedláček's life and of our society.

“The future is a relative concept. It’s up to us to imagine it.” How right this immaculately coiffed black and white television show host is as she drinks to a potentially coloured future at a time when people take the first steps on the moon and tanks roll into Prague – both events with incalculable consequences. For who really knows how people are going to live in a few decades? When Petr begins a diary on the day of his wedding to Jana in Prague in 1974, he doesn’t know how his world and his little family universe will develop – and influence each other. When Helena Třeštiková starts to accompany Jana’s pregnancy with her camera a little while later she has no idea that 37 years later this will become her longest long-term documentary so far: “Private Universe”.
Petr’s diary provides the variable framework of this thoroughlylight footed family portrait. From this perspective great political upheavals sometimes appear marginal, while first teeth take centre stage. The changes of Czech society are reproduced on a smaller scale, a life between Karel Gott and John Lennon. The actual dimensions of the film’s title are not revealed until the son, Honza, the rebel, gradually becomes the main protagonist. For when he was born 37 years ago he had no idea it was under the star of the camera. A lucky star?

Lars Meyer

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MDR Film Prize 2012

The humdrum daily routine of a tram driver: like every morning, men get on the vehicle to go to work, all similar, quiet, grey. And yet, on that day, prompted by the jolts and the road vibrations, to the rhythm of the tickets inserted in the ticket-stamping machine, the driver gets turned on and the tram goes erotic.