Discoveries from Czech Republic World Cinema

When Zdenka, a single woman in Czech Republic, started playing online games with strangers, she didn't know it would change her life. Neither did Tabish, a computer scientist a world away in Pakistan.

Our era is marked by the transformation of social institutions, with universities central to Euro-American civilisation’s development. Despite past persecution, universities have become bastions of free thought and knowledge, crucial to democratic culture. However, commercialisation and massification have introduced challenges affecting teaching, research, self-governance, and the system overall. How do universities maintain academic freedoms, and what are the consequences of their failure? Can we identify and address these challenges?

A behind-the-scenes look at the eleven-year process it took to make The Painted Bird. The narratives of director Václav Marhoul and actor Petr Kotlár weave their way through the various stages of the film's creation, offering their subjective views from the beginning to the last flap of a year-and-a-half long shoot.

In the 1980s, Anna, a Czech sprinter, starts training for the Olympics. After she collapses during training, she learns she is being given steroids and decides to stop using them until her mother helps the coaches give them to her.

Johann Faust comes back to life. After centuries spent in darkness he unleashes a night of terror in Prague, with vampires, zombies and mutants. This time, Faust has a new obsession - to get even with his past life and his family. There is also the devil Mephistopheles, who controls everything like a puppeteer from afar. The film based on Goethe's iconic work and unpublished, short stories by F. Kotleta and K. Sněgoňová presenting bloody coctail of horror and fantasy.

Linda and Vanda, two good-looking women in their thirties, are inseparable friends and co-owners of a small bookstore in the city center. Linda is divorced, educated and practical, has a little daughter and a sense of responsibility. Vanda, on the contrary, is single and free, attracting men as a magnet, but none of them is able to keep up with her spontaneity. Edo, shy, sensitive, and introverted gay working with them in the bookstore, longs for love for ages too. The lives of this trio get finally tangled by several men, while everything turns up differently than any of them had expected.

Set in a small Ukrainian village during the outbreak of war with Germany in 1941 Private Chonkin, not overly endowed with intelligence, is left to guard a downed military aircraft. The authorities appear to have forgotten about him so this leaves him free to work his chams on the village postmistress, Njura, untill the local militia are tipped off.

Johanka and Matyáš have an unusual home. The two live among the animals and plants of an enchanted botanical garden in the middle of the city, but this idyll is under threat. To the children’s horror, the mayor wants to build a theme park on the same spot. The Blue Tiger, an animal with magic powers, comes to their aid. Only he can protect the garden, but Johanka and Matyáš must now stop the mayor from capturing their newfound friend. MODRY TYGR is a colourful, atmospheric and imaginatively told animated fairytale that inspires the viewer to reflect on natural resources and habitats.

Told from the perspective of man reflecting on his childhood in Prague in the early years of World War II and the eventual destruction of his family as the Nazis rise to power. The storyline focuses heavily on Jewish-Czech Silberstein family members. Drama was filmed on the real events as a tribute to Mr. Nicholas Winton, the British humanitarian who organized the rescue of 669 children, most of them Jewish, from Czechoslovakia on the eve of the Second World War in an operation later known as the Czech Kindertransport from German-occupied Czechoslovakia and likely death in the Holocaust.

Martin was a veterinarian at the top of his game, until a dramatic life changing incident at work. It resulted in an inability to communicate with the world, spending the rest of his days in total isolation. The women in Martin's life are the narrators: his wife, his mother and his colleague, Jana, whose horse he was treating on that fateful day.

A young woman decides to solve the difficult financial situation of a young couple with online sex services. But one night her partner realizes that it can't go on like this and decides to do something about it. Even at the cost of breaking the law. A desperate situation calls for desperate actions.

A funny animated movie based on the classic Czech tales and legend of a young clockmaker, and his jealous friend, a wisecracking Goat.

The principal of an elementary school calls a special parents meeting after it’s alleged that the seemingly empathetic and kindly-looking teacher Mrs. Drazděchová uses her students to manipulate their parents.

Tony has been glowing since the day he was born and it causes him a lot of trouble. Just before the Christmas, a new odd girl with thick glasses moves into Tony’s house. Shelly has a strange way of expressing herself. Tony is fascinated by her but he is also being cautious at first. Together with Shelly’s flashlight, they explore their house and they are slowly getting to know each other. The kids have to join all their efforts to figure out who’s behind the circuit of dark cracks that sucks out all the light bulbs, even the daylight. It must be because of the ​“Spirit of the house”. A film about being different, about friendship, and first loves… But above all about light and darkness.

Follows the story of Viktor Purice - manager, former projectionist and lifetime cinephile and his two loyal employees, Cornelia & Lorena, in their everyday battle to preserve Dacia Panoramic Cinema in Piatra Neamt - one of the last remaining cinemas in Romania today. Having lived through "the golden age" of cinema, Viktor dreams of bringing back the good old glory days, yet struggles to keep up with the new harsh reality. In a theater that lacks heating and is slowly falling apart, with no support from the State who owns the place, it’s almost a Don Quixote fight.

One day, teenager Magda offers her expensive necklace to a sick child in the hospital she volunteers for- her father is certain she is lying again. When she proves her innocence, he is ashamed and guilty but also incapable of admitting he was wrong. Relationships are now broken and in chaos, and past decisions have an irreversible outcome.

After Yana finds out that her best friend is trapped in the war in Ukraine, she is forced to examine the moral compasses within her family. She visits her grandparents, who seem to trust Russian TV and radio more than her own account of events. This intimate drama is based on the reality of families divided by the war in Ukraine, including the author’s own. The film explores the inevitable choices between love and politics, friends and family, silence and resistance.

A moving account, in his own words, of the personal life and work of the brilliant Czech filmmaker Miloš Forman (1932-2018): his tragic childhood, his major contribution to the cultural movement known as the Czech New Wave, his exile in Paris, his troubled days in New York, his rise to stardom in Hollywood; a complete existence in the service of cinema.

As World War II rages on, Villi and Colette are captured and sent to Auschwitz concentration camp. Imprisoned within separate compounds, the lovers must risk their lives to be together again.

As two beach volleyball partners focus on personal matters and a championship tournament, a quirky figure disrupts their game on and off the court.

This adult comedy looks at the complex, intermingled sexual relationships between a bunch of diverse characters - a barmaid, a part-time prostitute, a hippy, a rocker, a medical student and a confused virgin!

Crime thriller inspired by the story of Jiri Kajinek, which is considered the first bounty hunter in the Czech Republic. Thanks to his escape from the prison fortress Mirov it became a legend and the most wanted man in Europe. Five weeks while eluding the police, is still shrouded in mystery. Kajínek Film is a powerful story of the most famous prisoner int the Czech Republic in our story of double murder, the story of lawyer looking for new evidence, the story of the underworld and its penetration into the government and handling of the story. George is a victim of conspiracy or Kajínek cold-blooded killer? Trying to prove his innocence or to intimidate and influence witnesses?

A teenage boy returns to his family after years apart, scarred from being sent to Vietnam while his younger brother stayed in Czechia. After reunion, he faces a distant father, a mother desperate to mend the past, and a brother uneasy about sharing the spotlight. One chaotic summer pushes them to their limits when the younger brother falls from a roof. Between misunderstandings and clumsy family dynamics, they learn that sometimes, healing begins by letting the cracks show.

A train dispatcher encounters a mute stranger who appears out of nowhere, and finds himself mysteriously involved with a murder in Poland. The end of the eighties in the twentieth century. Alois Nebel works as a dis­patcher at the small railway station in Bílý Potok, a remote village on the Czech–Polish border. He's a loner, who prefers old timetables to people, and he finds the loneliness of the station tranquil – except when the fog rolls in. Then he hallucinates, sees trains from the last hundred years pass through the station. They bring ghosts and shadows from the dark past of Central Eu­rope. Alois can’t get rid of these nightmares and eventually ends up in sanatorium. In the sanatorium, he gets to know The Mute, a man carrying an old photograph who was arrested by the police after crossing the border. No one knows why he came to Bílý Potok or who he’s looking for, but it is his past that propels Alois on his journey…

In an attic full of discarded junk, a pretty doll called Buttercup lives in an old trunk together with her friends, the marionette Prince Charming, lazy Teddy Bear and the plasticine creature Schubert. When Buttercup is snatched and taken off to the Land of Evil, her pals set out to rescue her.

Lubos, an Alpine rescue worker, surprises his delighted daughter Amálka with an early return to Prague. Her joy leads her to skip school, prompting Lubos to join her class on a Tatra mountains trip. Amidst family chaos and comedic mishaps, their reunion hangs in the balance.

Sir "P" a 90 year old gray parrot, formerly living with Edouard Daladier, the French prime minister responsible for signing the Munich Treaty, comes to Prague to give his "account" of the past events. But can he do it, being just a bird? In a series of weird events sir is kidnapped by a Czech journalist undergoing his midlife crisis. The guy has him publicly say some really controversial statements, causing a diplomatic scandal. At the end of the day it is the French who decide to assassinate their own national hero....And that's only the half of the story.

Young Ondra has asthma and so his parents throw away his favourite toy: a musty old stuffed bear named Kooky. That night Ondra dreams that Kooky is determined to find his way back home from the dump. In the boy's fantasy, the bear gets lost in a forest occupied by strange animals and remarkable beings that he never heard of while living on the toy shelf in Ondra's room. And of course even in this small imaginary world, true good exists as does real evil, which Kooky must face up to in order to become a real hero.

Helena, is about to give birth and face a rosy future in a modern city, as the pregnant wife of an important factory manager. However, all her illusions soon perish, as the dead body of a newborn intersex baby is found in the middle of their factory. Helena needs to find out what happened here for the safety of her own child, but she runs into her own prejudices.

Martina and her three friends, all high school professors, embark on an experiment to maintain a constant low level of intoxication throughout the day. Based on the Oscar winning movie "Another Round" (2020)

Mischievously self-assured Mára and somewhat eccentric Heduš set out into the frozen wastes in search of adventure – by car, naturally. After all, Mára’s turning fifteen soon. A road movie about the flies that occasionally buzz around even in winter, and a story that tells of the elusive bond of boyhood friendship and the irrepressible desire to experience something, even if you don't exactly know what.

11-year-old Rea has recently moved to a distant planet in an outer-space colony where she discovers a mysterious animal cub while her father works in a factory that builds robotic creatures. With the help of her new friend Andy, she must protect the real cub from the factory’s ruthless owner, who intends to turn it into a robotic prototype.

In 1943, a childless couple, the Čížeks, decide to hide a Jewish refugee, David Wiener, the son of Čížek's former employer, in the secret pantry of their apartment. Čížek is aware of the danger into which he has brought his household and his neighbours, but he takes helping his fellow man in need for granted. But at the same time, as a largely unheroic hero, he is dying of fear. His personal situation is greatly complicated by the approaching end of the war, when he faces danger from both the Germans and his "honest" fellow Czechs...

Under the tutelage of her aunt, the beautiful and evil Klara, the young Elizabeth Bathory has an awakening that leads to mass mayhem and a lifetime of sinful deadly deeds.

Frantisek, the main character is returning to his family. Until now he's been, "successfully" avoiding all relationships. He is an ingenuous and a pure person and thus, is regarded as an idiot. He becomes involved in various love and family conflicts. It is because he hasn't experienced much of the "real" life that he is able to perceive human relationships in their genuineness.

Three brothers leave their home to see the world. During their journey, young men as by miracle enter into famous fairy tales (Little Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, Twelve Months) and face traps, unexpected moments and even love in a story full of humor and songs.

This story actually happened in the region around the city of Sumperk in Jeseniky Mountains in May 1945. The disappearance of Agnes, the German wife of a Czech forester Jan Olsan is a dark mystery. She is the only one who knows who and for what reason is looking for her. It's the end of the war, times are bad and the Czechs are coming back from the inland to the frontier. The guards are forming and soldiers are coming. Fate brings together the outlaw Jan and his German brother-in-law Jurgen who has just returned from the eastern front line. Both men are looking for exactly the same woman and that is Agnes. But Agnes escaped; she is running away through the deep woods followed by the most powerful man of the county. Running away for what she had witnessed. The fatality of the relationship between Agnes and Jan can only be learned in the mountains on this thorny journey.

The psyche of a ruthless secret agent in Cold War Czechoslovakia begins to unravel when he obsesses over the girlfriend of a suspected subversive he is tracking. This taut political thriller is a bleak and potent rendering of the emotional destruction wreaked by totalitarianism.

In an attic full of discarded junk, a pretty doll called Buttercup lives in an old trunk together with her friends, the marionette Prince Charming, lazy Teddy Bear and the plasticine creature Schubert. When Buttercup is snatched and taken off to the Land of Evil, her pals set out to rescue her.

Crime thriller inspired by the story of Jiri Kajinek, which is considered the first bounty hunter in the Czech Republic. Thanks to his escape from the prison fortress Mirov it became a legend and the most wanted man in Europe. Five weeks while eluding the police, is still shrouded in mystery. Kajínek Film is a powerful story of the most famous prisoner int the Czech Republic in our story of double murder, the story of lawyer looking for new evidence, the story of the underworld and its penetration into the government and handling of the story. George is a victim of conspiracy or Kajínek cold-blooded killer? Trying to prove his innocence or to intimidate and influence witnesses?

A moving account, in his own words, of the personal life and work of the brilliant Czech filmmaker Miloš Forman (1932-2018): his tragic childhood, his major contribution to the cultural movement known as the Czech New Wave, his exile in Paris, his troubled days in New York, his rise to stardom in Hollywood; a complete existence in the service of cinema.

A coming of age story about love, loss and revenge centers around two teenage friends, Adam and Marek, whose aimless lives in a small town are suddenly disrupted by the appearance of Anna, the troubled daughter of a rich and influential local businessman. Initially her free spirit energizes Adam but soon he finds himself thrown into a spiraling chain of events. His innocence is about to be abruptly replaced with the adult emotions of guilt, fear and revenge.

After the centenarian Trudy’s death, her inheritors refuse the scheming mayor’s bid to buy her lakeside estate for a car lot and instead set about renovating the allegedly haunted villa. Their plans, already complicated by the village busybodies led by the all-knowing Horáčková, go wrong when a youthful, sporty new priest arrives and challenges the community’s expectations.

Everyone knows something like this is happening. But this is the only experiment to fully demonstrate what excessive openness on the internet means. The filmmaking couple hired youthful-looking (but over 18) actresses to pretend to be prepubescent girls and communicate with strangers who approached them based on their fake accounts. They attracted dozens of men in the first ten days, then hundreds, and finally thousands...

Slovakia, on the eve of the outbreak of World War II. The family of the young Jewish Martin Friedmann gathers to celebrate his bar mitzvah and make a solemn promise that they will all meet again a year later around the same table; but the storms of war and anti-Semitic fanaticism will lead each of them down very different paths.

A bittersweet comedy starring the great Vlastimil Brodský as Fanda, an old man who refuses to grow up. Despite pleas from his exasperated wife who wants him to make serious decisions about the future, Fanda ignores the nagging and spends his days seeking amusement and adventure.

A man leaves his busy city life for the peace of the country home where he spent his early childhood. His new life is soon disturbed by strange events.

Thief Viliam, swindler Emília, and the unwitting Tobiáš are implicated in stealing St. Peter’s key. After dying and facing judgment at heaven’s gate, Saint Peter sends them back to earth with a strict deadline to recover the key or be damned. Their quest leads them to a castle where a kindly king and a beautiful princess await, but they must also outwit treacherous chancellors and foil their malicious schemes.

Young talented Elizabeth leaves a successful career in ballet for love. The man who has stolen her heart, however, has a dark side, and in a single moment Elizabeth loses everything dear to her in life.

After two troubled but powerful men rape a young hitchhiker who happens to be a vet, she drugs them and removes their testicles.

Dreaded serial killer Peter Kurten voluntarily turns himself over to the authorities. A young lawyer, eager to prove Kurten's mental derangement, agrees to defend a man who terrorized Germany between 1929 and 1931. In studying the case and meeting with the intelligent, cold-blooded manipulator, the young idealist's values become warped.

Dedicated home care nurse Vlasta attends her whimsical patients in Czech wine country and lives for her husband Lada and her daughter, but one day things change and Vlasta is forced to reach outside of her comfort zone. Drama and gentle humor intertwine as Vlasta realizes, for the first time in her life, that she might need some care, too.

A story of Eliska and her daughter, starting a new life in a remote house with the 'father away on business', as the mother claims. After the lie is disclosed, their relationship begins to wither. At that time, the mythical Noonday Witch begins to materialize. She is coming closer and closer and the question is poised: is the danger real or is it all in the mother's crumbling head?

A look at the life, work and importance of Czech filmmaker Karel Zeman (1910-89), a genius of world cinema, a wizard of special effects, revealing his sources of inspiration and his revolutionary filming techniques.

Somewhere in the Forbidden Forest lives the evil wizard Kruciatus. A hundred years ago, he attempted to destroy the kingdom now ruled by King Alexander, who has two sons - the heir to the throne, John, and the younger prince, Charles. However, Charles refuses to accept his role as second in line at any cost. With the help of his servant Pakosta, he breaks into a forbidden chamber in the castle, obtains magical props left behind by the evil wizard, and intends to destroy his brother. Prince John drinks a magic potion served to him by his mischievous brother, which instantly erases his memory. John then recklessly sets off on a journey to the Forbidden Forest, where everyone who has ever entered has disappeared without a trace.

This adult comedy looks at the complex, intermingled sexual relationships between a bunch of diverse characters - a barmaid, a part-time prostitute, a hippy, a rocker, a medical student and a confused virgin!

Four old friends decide to shake up their unhappy, monotonous lives with a friendly bet and set off a series of unexpected events.