Dani Rovira

The life of successful Czech healer Jan Mikolasek, who diagnosed and healed people using his intuition and strong familiarity with plants, set against the background of the events of the totalitarian fifties. Herbalist Jan Mikolase dedicated his life to caring for the sick despite the immense obstacles he faced in his private and public life. Born at the turn of the 20th century, Mikolasek wins fame and fortune using unorthodox plant-based treatment methods to cure a wide range of diseases. Already a local institution in Czechoslovakia before World War II, the healer gains in reputation and wealth both during the Nazi occupation and under Communist rule. One after the other, each regime wants to use his skills and in return give him protection. But how high shall the costs be to maintain this status as the tide turns. The Czech Republic in the 1950s. Long queues form every day outside the villa of the famous faith healer Jan Mikolásek (Ivan Trojan) in Jenstejn. People who want to be treated by him have to bring a clear bottle of their urine. Mrs Mühlbacherová (Jaroslava Pokorná), a healer from his home village, had taught young Jan (Josef Trojan) how to judge urine by its color and turbidity and what herbal treatment can be derived from it. With the help of a lamp, the healer examines each vial, dictates the diagnoses and a special treatment plan for each patient to his assistant Frantisek Palko (Juraj Loj). He even gives some of them money for a holiday by the sea or in the mountains. Even now, when a new political wind is blowing in the country, he has no intention of retiring. But the newspapers, which are subject to communist censorship, vilify him as a charlatan. One night, Mikolásek and Palko are arrested. He is accused of poisoning Comrade Strohal, a long-serving member of the Communist Party. In truth, those in power are suspicious of his extravagant lifestyle and his homosexual relationship with his assistant. When it turns out that there never was a patient Strohal, the defendants gain hope. —ARD

Based on true events, a Spanish man with multiple sclerosis who tried to finish an Iron-Man competition despite he was told that he could not make 100 meters. Ramón Arroyo is a man who lives in Bilbao (Basque Country, north to Spain) with his wife Inma working as CEO in an important company with friends and job partners as Mario. But his daily life ends when one day he wakes up to find himself briefly paralyzed, being unable to stand up from the bed. Trying to know what happens, Inma and Ramón go to the hospital, where the revelation couldn't be worse: Ramón is diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, a muscular degeneration that progressively will stop any movement of his body, leaving him in a wheelchair the rest of his life. Starting a treatment in the hospital to minimize the symptoms, where he meets other patients with a more advanced state of the disease, Inma has her own troubles due her father Manolo, who has tried commit suicide in his country house where he lives alone after the death of his wife and Inma's mother. Moving Manolo to the city to live with them, things complicate by the so much bad relation between Ramón and Manolo, causing the frustration and desperation in Inma. But things change the day that Ramón reads in the hospital an info post about an Iron Man competition, a race where the participants must to be 3,8 km (2.3 miles) swimming, 180 km (112 miles) cycling and 42 km (26 miles) running to end it. Determined to win it, Ramón enlists to participate, receiving an unwanted help of Manolo, a former professional athlete in his youth days. Unable to training him in the city, Manolo moves with Ramón to the country house, where Ramón discovers casually that the reason of Manolo's failed try of suicide is his pain by his wife's loss. Meeting a few later the charming Noelia in the beach during a training, Ramón decides deceive Manolo to date her hoping help him. According the Iron Man's date is coming, Ramón looking for the way to prove that the real Iron Man aren't superheroes embodied in a metal suit, but ordinary people ready to fight until the end to defeat their inner evil and show that human being can be extraordinary. —Chockys