Jan Kačer

The brilliant Czech writer Milan Kundera has not given an interview in thirty years; nor does he appear in public. How did he become a legendary author? What is so unique about his books?

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Documentary about Barrandov studios.

Zdena, a young nurse, starts her first night shift at an old people’s home and immediately faces a difficult task: she has to deal with the body of a deceased client. A gentle portrait of faltering youth and a realistic tale of an encounter with death in a blend of physically intense moments and absurd humour.

A boy is accidentally killed at an informal hunt somewhere on the border of two European countries. One of the people involved is Minister Berger, the hot candidate for the influential post of High Commissioner for Water Management, who will be tasked with finding the solution to increasing water shortages across Europe. The government hires secret agent Steiner to hush up the scandal. The more he investigates the case, the more embroiled he becomes in dilemmas of power and its execution.

The beautiful lady, as the locals call the widow and owner of the apartment building, the aging Mrs. Růžena, lives in a neighborhood nicknamed Little Asia. Her last tenant has just moved out, and she lives alone with her parrot. At this moment, an older man, Kurd Kemal, a construction foreman looking for a sublet, comes to the house. After some initial reserve, Růžena and the man understand each other in a special way. Both have their dignity, stemming from living in a different culture, and both have their favorite animal—she has a parrot, he has a black cat. When the distinguished lady learns that Kemal needs to marry a Czech woman so that he does not have to return to his homeland, she tries to help him and marries him...

No synopsis available yet.

No synopsis available yet.

It's one bad day for Rudolf, a lonely 77-year old retired linguist, when he finds himself tailed by a dog he can't get rid of on his way to the post office. This encounter eventually leads to a complete and unexpected change in his life.

Czech Television's epic historical film draws on the breathtaking dramatic life of the great of Czech history, King Charles IV.

An exciting drama from a detective history. In 1899 a dead girl - seamstress Anežka Hrůzová - was found between the village of Věžnička and the town of Polná. She was 19 and she had a cutting wound on the throat. There was no sexual violence involved and since the local doctors thought that there was not enough blood on the crime scene, everyone jumped to the conclusion that Jews must have killed her and added her blood to their passover matzot. There was a potential murderer at hand too - a cheeky, not very bright young Jewish rover, Leopold Hilsner…

Every day, head nurse Marta's life is an exhausting merry-go-round of the most tedious duties. She recently became a widow and is alone with her teenage son. She doesn't complain about anything, convincing herself as a true communist that she lives in paradise and is safe. Everything around her is normal, after all. Everyone is looking forward to a better tomorrow. But then comes a turning point that turns her life upside down. A young, cheeky hospital maintenance worker named Oskar, with hair down to his shoulders and opinions that shatter Marty's safe, normal world into pieces, enters her lonely life. Her relationship with the nonconformist young man changes all her previous certainties about life, as was possible under the socialist regime, in times of "normality."

When nostalgia makes her rethink the sale of her family cottage, a woman cajoles her husband and loved ones into one last getaway.

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Based on real event, Bolero is an excellent story of progressive recovery of a crime. The story surprises all the time, shows new connections, new possibilities, exposes new ideas and facts. It's possible to understand the film on more levels. It describes the position and all the feelings of victim's family, the police work as well as the impact of the crime on it's malefactors. It also touches the topic of moral decay of the descendants of rich, high-posted families. In addition to this, the power of the storyline is accentuated by the quality of the artistic treatment of the whole piece.

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Sentiment is Tomáš Hejtmánek's intimate documentary portrait of the great Czech director František Vláčil. The film was inspired by encounters with the filmmaker and told through taped interviews, reconstructions of meetings with Vláčil, visits to actual film locations (of Marketa Lazarova, The Valley of the Bees and Adelheid) and Vláčil-inspired film sequences. The result is one of the most unique and personal portraits of any artist – a collage of voices, sounds and images that evoke and celebrate Vláčil’s life and work.

A recording of the production from the courtyard of the Supreme Purkrab of Prague Castle starring Jan Tříská. Shakespeare's tragedy King Lear is a timeless tale of love, hate, betrayal, greed and lust for power. At the end of his life, the King decides to divide the kingdom between his three daughters based on their speeches about how much they love him. In his blindness, he disinherits and exiles the most honest and beloved Cordelia. He hands over all his power to his other two daughters and only in time does he discover what he has done and gradually slips into madness.

The film adaptation of the novel of the same by Michal Viewegh. The hero of the novel is a primary school teacher with a successful writing career ahead of him who accepts well-paid employment from an entrepreneur who entrusts him with the task of making his unusual daughter "see sense".

An allegory set in an archetypal Czech village, it tells the story of what happens when a series of mysterious events take place, including the disappearance of the station master. While everything has a rational explanation, collective paranoia takes over and everyone's worst instincts are unleashed. Interrogations, disenfranchisement, and the search for scapegoats ultimately lead to murder. The movie was completed in 1969, but it was banned and not released till 1990, Evald Schorm who died in 1988 never saw it completed.

Biography of Karel Čapek.

No synopsis available yet.

No synopsis available yet.

No synopsis available yet.

No synopsis available yet.

An expedition arrives on planet Arkha, which appears desolate and uninhabited and yet suitable for a planned mass exodus from polluted Earth. One day seemingly from nowhere and quite unexpectedly a young boy wanders into their ship and then runs off.

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Eleven disparate adolescents, gathered for a skiing camp at an isolated winter resort, find themselves preyed upon and set against one another by their three mysterious instructors.

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No synopsis available yet.

This distinctive documentary portrait of Prague extolls the beauty, significance and spirit of the ancient city adopting modern way of life. The form and content of the film share a common underlining principle. The author doesn't simply list out the sequence of events, but rather approaches them in a broader context of their historic implications and circumstances. The content of the film covers a large period from the pagan times to these days. The facts are grouped under several general headings (paganry, the spread of Christianity, renaissance, baroq and modern times) with allusions to the modern life of Prague and Praguers that has its roots in those times.

A car accident occurs and Dusan's teenage daughter Milena gets very seriously injured. To add insult to injury, Dusan is unable to donate a kidney when he finds out he is not Milena's biological father. Dusan is left to cope with his wife's infidelity, as well as the life of his ailing daughter.

An overprotective mother plagues her daughter out of guilt over unintentionally scarring her daughter's cheek.

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No synopsis available yet.

Story of an extraordinary musician, violinist, who was famous, but his alcoholism led him to poverty. Now he is playing time from time to rich people. Then Albert meets count Delesov, who tries to change Albert's life. Two different characters, two ways of life confront... Will Albert change? Should he?

A few weeks in the life of the family of an attractive woman, the TV presenter Magda, her second husband and her teenage son. Magda is a lively, energetic woman, not for nothing is she called "the boss" at home. Besides her profession, she handles other problems with aplomb. Her dream is to finally move from her small apartment to her self-built villa on the river and to make it by Christmas Eve. But everything is unpredictable and sometimes life finds its own ways.

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In a South Moravian wine-growing village in the early 1970s lives an old man who cannot accept the attitude of the younger generation towards nature and agriculture. Director Hynek Bočan made a number of films based on Jan Kostrhun's drafts, mostly set in the South Moravian environment (including The Face Behind the Glass), but the portraits were very flat. Relationships between people were often depicted in predictable schemes. The hero this time is an old villager who is struggling to cope with the changes in his attitude to nature and to agricultural work in general. He sees his only hope in his grandson, to whom he tries to pass on his life experience.

Slovak psychological drama from the end of World War II. The plot of the film takes place in a short period of time just before the outbreak of the uprising. It is the story of a man who wages his "private" war against the man who is responsible for the serious injury of his brother. The upcoming Slovak National Uprising becomes the backdrop for a model-built story that touches on stubborn personal revenge in a situation of war conflict, when human life loses all value. The actions of the main character thus sound like increasingly absurd actions, his motives and the impact of his actions are relativized, the very legitimacy of such a belief appears shaky.

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Jan Kačer became known primarily as an actor, but he also took up film directing several times - not very successfully. Based on someone else's script, he made a committed, building story: it tells the story of an experienced engineer who is commissioned to assemble a team of specialists for engineering the peaceful use of atomic energy. However, the explanation of human dilemmas is too flat and proclamatory, as is the image of Ostrava's industrial environment; the heroes are thinking about one thing: the proper completion of the assigned task...

An aristocratic woman suffers a severe nervous breakdown and is subsequently institutionalized following a disastrous infidelity. She descends into madness while grappling with intense psychological torment and the fallout of her social and personal life.

Three detective stories, three different views of life and death... Collection of three horror short stories.

"A refined film essay about the loneliness, wisdom and humility of old women. The film, most valued by Jan Špáta, was awarded the Grand Prize at the International Short Film Festival in Oberhausen, the Trilobit Award and Special Mention at the IFF in Karlovy Vary."

The invincible agent Cyril Juan Borguette alias W4C has been assigned a mission to go to a hotel in Prague, get hold of a saltcellar with a plan for the military exploitation of Venus hidden in it, and hand it over to the beautiful agent Alice. He will have to compete for the saltcellar with other agents working for the world's various greater and smaller powers. The head of the Prague counter-intelligence unit gets news of agent W4C's mission. Deficient in personnel, he nominates accountant Foustka as agent 13B. Mr Foustka takes his dog Pajda with him and the two head for the airport. Pajda helps him track down agent W4C in a classy hotel that becomes the battleground for the interests and plans of the secret agents from different countries, each trying to get hold of the precious saltcellar.

Bernhard works as a warehouse clerk in Munich. After being sentenced to probation for a physical altercation with a right-wing extremist, he could no longer continue his engineering studies. Bernhard meets Johanna. She comes from a well-to-do family; her father is a real-estate developer and her brother is in the diplomatic service. Bernhard wants to share his roots with her, so the two go to Prague, where he lived until the end of the war. But her father disapproves of the trip to the Eastern bloc. When Bernhard finds out that he owes his chance to develop new technology, which led to his career advancement, to his girlfriend’s father, he is upset …

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Cast out by his father, young Ondrej joins the Order of the Teutonic Knights, where he is raised by strict monk Armin. After years of hardship, Ondrej escapes from the Order when he is wrongly punished, and sets out for his former home. Arriving to discover his father to be dead, Ondrej now not only assumes control of his father's properties, but seeks to marry his former stepmother.

A dialogue between judge and convict, winner and loser, which offers the viewer a reflection on the relativity of guilt, heroism and crime in the world of "isms".

Michal, a disillusioned teenager, clashes with his authoritarian father and runs away from home. Adrift in the city, he navigates a restless journey of fleeting encounters while rejecting the rigid values of his parents' generation.

This three-part Austrian/Czech comedy stretches the boundaries of what is considered to be humorous. Part one finds a silent film actor upset because of a rival actor's attention to the former's wife. When he kills his rival, it is only when he is strapped to the electric chair that he realizes that this is his last live scene. The second episode has the wife of an elderly British nobleman having an affair with the young gamekeeper of their estate. Part three finds a peasant woman taking a lover when her husband goes off to fight the war.

Pavel is a Czech partisan fighter in the waning days of the war. Just as peace is declared, Pavel is shot in the spine and sent to the hospital emergency ward. As he fades in and out of consciousness, he recalls the events that led to his participation in the underground. Holding German occupation commander Engelchen responsible for all the horrors and deprivations heaped upon his comrades, Pavel is kept alive by the possibility of recovering and exacting vengeance upon the Nazi officer - no matter how long it takes.

At the centre of the story is Miss Lenka Stříbrná. An attractive, but a little strange young woman. The gym teacher Vasek is shy and very clumsy with women. So he asks his friend, the editor Karel, for help. The experienced seducer willingly seizes the opportunity and tries to win Lenka for himself, but all his efforts fail due to her stubbornness. Gradually, this comedy-tinged love etude gives way to drama. It culminates at an editorial party at the Slap Dam, where all the characters in the story meet unexpectedly and editor Leden finally understands what Miss Silver's flirtation was all about.

Engineer Jan Sebek (Jan Kacer) is undergoing treatment in a mental home after his unsuccessful attempt to commit suicide. His therapist, via discussions both with the patient and with people who know him, tries to find out what made the young and seemingly satisfied man decide to end his own life. Jan's pretty wife Jana (Jana Brejchová) claims not to know about anything but she is conducting an affair with a family friend, almost publicly and with the blessing of her parents.

A successful art historian who has trouble telling people difficult truths, finds himself in an inescapable situation when a small lie quickly gets out of hand.

Delinquent youths wander aimlessly and commit mischief. Few, however, manage to break free from the influence of such a gang. One of the lucky ones is a girl who grew up in an orphanage - already reformed and reformed, she remembers her dark past.

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A passionate communist worker is discouraged by the changing political climate and the failure of his peers to live up to his ideals.

A synagogue service in Bohemia, where the Torah scrolls are ceremoniously taken out and read, intercut with images of a Jewish cemetery.