On the morning of May 31, 2003, in a field somewhere outside Prague, nothing happened, and 4,000 people were present to watch.

How and why they came to be there is the subject of “Czech Dream,” which opens today at the IFC Center. The rollicking movie documents a bold hoax by two Czech film students who promoted the grand opening of a nonexistent superstore. In the besotted shoptill-you-drop society of their postcommunist country, the pair hijacked the hype machine and punked consumerism, with amusing and revealing results.

“Czech Dream” is a bit like an image-industry reality show, but viewed with cynicism and interspersed with Michael Moore-style bits of business. We accompany Filip Remunda and Vit Klusák, posing as businessmen, as they run through the apparatus of product launch: dynamic executive photo shoots; creepy market research; slogan, jingle, and logo composition, and the multiplefront deployment of ads, ads, ads — the heat of manufactured anticipation that produces their shimmering mirage.

The young men tap a well-established phenomenon in choosing to fake a “hypermarket” (the European term for Wal-Mart plus groceries). In the late 1990s, more than 100 of the stores opened in the Czech Republic and fed a zombie-grade hunger for daylong, onestop shopping. “You can relax, you can look at stuff,” one family explains, vapidly pimping their enthusiasm for the camera. “Tesco is more fun than hiking,” the daughter admits.

Czech Dream is to be the store’s name, the logo a comic book thought bubble, evoking a place where people can fill their carts and forget their cares. Approaching from both sides of the equation, Messrs. Remunda and Klusák delight in tweaking not only the willingness of people to get swept up but also the utopian promises of advertising. They are especially unsparing in exposing the self-satisfied hubris and hollowed-out values of their chosen PR firm, who are in on the joke from the beginning.

“Our ads work even if the product sucks or doesn’t exist at all,” says the head adman, who cynically cites the Sistine Chapel as an early instance not of belief-driven art but of commissioned advertising (the product: God). A market researcher stumbles through an exquisite analogy to justify his participation (“A doctor can’t refuse to operate on a child rapist … so in this analogy, I must be…”) before his boss steps in.

Everything is run up to the “Oz” moment of this performance piece, when people appear on the appointed day clutching circulars. The crowd’s varied reactions make for an indelible moment, the raw data of shock-induced opinion. It’s when the mechanics of desire are revealed for what they are, in the absence of any real object — or, for others, it’s proof that filmmakers are never to be trusted. (Maybe the biggest shock is that this all happened once before: In interviews, Messrs. Remunda and Klusákcredit a similar, smaller-scale stunt in 1997 by Petr Lorenc, a young innovator in Czech theater who died suddenly last summer.)

What comes out just as powerfully at the unveiling is the political satire that might not be immediately apparent to American audiences. The Czech Republic, now a member of the European Union, was at this time beset by promises and arguments from the government about the economic benefits of joining. The film, which opens with footage of 1972 food lines under communism, provocatively comes full circle to the ideological leap of faith required by the European Union.

Messrs. Remunda and Klusák, just south of 30, are fit for the role of schlub showmen, but they know when to hang back. The substance/shamelessness quotient compares favorably to other pranksters, even at the risk of losing a bit of sympathy. Elderly shoppers straggling across the field on walkers might be too tough for viewers to see as proof of the insidiousness of marketing and not simply the messengers.

Admittedly, the familiar commentary of “Czech Dream” benefits from the fresh canvas of a foreign country. Yet the film’s wry, eloquent conclusion lodges in the brain: After the hypermarket ads are taken down from bus stops, posters for Lucky Strike and MasterCard are rolled up in their place. It’s back to business as usual, but paper never looked so transparent.

Through June 21 (323 Sixth Ave. at West 3rd Street, 212-924-7771).