Patočka worked in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic for almost his entire career, but never joined the Communist Party and was affected by persecution, which ended in his death as a dissident spokesperson of Charter 77.

On the other hand, he also criticised Heideggerian philosophy for not dealing sufficiently with the basic structures of being-in-the-world, which are not truth-revealing activities (this led him to an appreciation of the work of Hannah Arendt).

[1] As he was banned from teaching (see below), he held clandestine lectures in his private apartment on the Greek thought in general and on Plato in particular in the late 70s.

In 1971, he has published a small treatise on Comenius in German titled Die Philosophy der Erziehung des J.A.

[2] Patočka's Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History is analyzed at length and with much care in Jacques Derrida's important book The Gift of Death.

Along with other banned intellectuals he gave lectures at the so-called "Underground University", which was an informal institution that tried to offer a free, uncensored cultural education.

On March 3, 1977, he was held by the police for ten hours, who had claimed that he would be allowed to speak in his role as a Charter spokesperson with a high-ranking official (in fact, this was a pretext to keep him from attending a reception at the West German embassy[3]).

This film explores Patočka's life and work in the second half of the twentieth century in Communist Central Europe by interviewing several of his students and friends.