Jiří Menzel
Birthday: 1938-02-23
Place of Birth: Prague, Czechoslovakia [now Czech Republic]
Biography: Jiří Menzel (Czech: [ˈjɪr̝iː ˈmɛntsl̩] was a Czech film director, theatre director, actor, and screenwriter. His films often combine a humanistic view of the world with sarcasm and provocative cinematography. Some of these films are adapted from works by Czech writers such as Bohumil Hrabal and Vladislav Vančura. Menzel, a member of the Czech New Wave, became internationally famous in 1967, when his first feature film, Closely Watched Trains, won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. His controversial film Larks on a String was filmed in 1969, but was initially banned by the Czechoslovakian government. It was finally released in 1990 after the fall of the Communist regime. The film won the Golden Bear at the 40th Berlin International Film Festival. Menzel was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film again in 1986 with his dark comedy My Sweet Little Village. In 1987, he was a member of the jury at the 37th Berlin International Film Festival. In 1989 he was a member of the jury at the 16th Moscow International Film Festival. In 1995 he was a member of the jury at the 19th Moscow International Film Festival. He would be conferred with IIFA Lifetime Achievement Award in November 2013.
Movies
Closely Watched Trains
At a village railway station in occupied Czechoslovakia, a bumbling dispatcher’s apprentice longs to...
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Larks on a String
In post-WWII Communist Czechoslovakia, several characters considered bourgeois are sentenced to work...
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Operation Dunaj
Operation Danube was the cover name for the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact armies in Augu...
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Sechse kommen durch die Welt
The King of Malabunt has won another war, after decorating himself and his three wooden marshals, he...
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Pocta V+W
Jiří Suchý recalls two of the most prominent artistic and creative figures in Czechoslovak culture o...
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Capricious Summer
Middle-aged Antonin and his friends, the major, now retired, and the canon, are in the river, swimmi...
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Ferat Vampire
A doctor is shocked when his beloved colleague Mima signs a contract with foreign car manufacturer F...
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The Cremator
In 1930s Prague, a Czech cremator who firmly believes cremation relieves one from earthly suffering ...
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The Apple Game
Sarcastic comedy about the Czechoslovakia of the seventies. A young gynaecologist can't figure out w...
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Those Wonderful Movie Cranks
Returning home to Prague, the magician Pasparte, an owner of a circus caravan, meets his dying colle...
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Ceiling
The young Marta has made a break in her medical education to fully invest in her career as a model. ...
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The Return of the Prodigal Son
Engineer Jan Sebek (Jan Kacer) is undergoing treatment in a mental home after his unsuccessful attem...
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A Place in the Crowd
A film in five episodes, all based on an attempt to show the life of young people today, their feeli...
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Minden szerdán
Stephen, living in a troubled family, breaks into a grocery store and wreaks vandalism. He is sent t...
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Searching
Michal's father and his friends are stigmatized by their war experience and the post-war social defo...
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Pearls of the Deep
A quintet of vignettes based on short stories by Bohumil Hrabal: an eventful trip to the motorcycle ...
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Pension pro svobodné pány
A young man living in a strictly run boarding house secretly brings a girl of loose morals into his ...
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Volejte Martina
The series of children's films about Detective Martin, who intervenes in cases involving children, b...
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If a Thousand Clarinets
A military base. An awkward soldier. A statue of Bach. And suddenly all guns in the area change into...
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Martin Speaking
The second installment of children's stories investigator Dr. Martin. The film has two stories:...
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Flám
A comedy about a charismatic man who lacks the confidence of his surroundings. However, he was not c...
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Windstorm
A worker steals bits and pieces of building materials from work to construct a new home for himself ...
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The Gentle Barbarian
A commemorative and essayistic meditative piece on the Prague quarter Libeň during the 1950s....
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Too Loud A Solitude
An elderly paper-crusher branded a fool in Prague secretly stashes condemned books, preserving their...
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Albert
Story of an extraordinary musician, violinist, who was famous, but his alcoholism led him to poverty...
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Hearty Greetings from the Globe
Two aliens stir up trouble on Earth in order to study humans. Misunderstandings ensue....
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Nevěsta
The female employees of the poultry-processing factory find relief from their monotonous work in cha...
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Straw Hat
Slacker Maurice Fadinar wasted his whole inheritance and the only way out of this situation, as it s...
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Joint Venture
Prague 1994, hotbed of international profiteers. Here you can still find buyers for discarded everyd...
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Daddy
This film is a documentary-style look at the life of the beloved Czech actor, Zdeněk Svěrák....
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Fandy ó Fandy
Little kids, little worries, big kids, big worries, sighs many a parent often. This is no different ...
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The Presence of Arnošt Lustig
"A man is immortal as long as he lives in the memory of others,” said well-known Czech writer Arnošt...
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Signál
Two young technicians, Filos and Kája, come to a small village that is a bit cut off from the rest o...
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Passing Fancy
The main character of the story which takes place in the twenties in Budapest is the poet Dr. Rácz G...
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Revenge
A celebrated theatre director’s perfect life unravels when his wife’s secret lover exposes the hollo...
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Koportos
Balog Mihály, the Gypsy man from Szabolcs works in Budapest. That is where he is notified that his y...
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Martha and I
Emil (Vaclav Chalupa as a teen, Ondrej Vetchy as an adult) has been naughty, and his family is at a ...
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Martha and I
Emil (Vaclav Chalupa as a teen, Ondrej Vetchy as an adult) has been naughty, and his family is at a ...
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Heart Tremors
The general practitioner Balla and his wife abandoning her higher education begin their common life ...
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Dr. Hrabal
A film impression about Bohumil Hrabal - an encounter with the man and his literary work. The film w...
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More Than Words
TV miniseries "More than words explores the possibilities and ways of behavior in non-verbal communi...
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Dita Saxová
A beautiful, underachieving, 18-year-old orphan considers various suitors, ponders philosophy, and t...
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An Occasion to Speak
Documentary about the film academy in Prague and the Czech Film in 1965....
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The Wolf from Royal Vineyard Street
The film tells the life story of its director, Jan Nemec, one of the most known and important filmma...
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Everything I Like
A film about the uncertainties faced by a man in post-Communist Slovakia, his relationship with a te...
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Nobody Will Laugh
A successful art historian who has trouble telling people difficult truths, finds himself in an ines...
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All My Loved Ones
Told from the perspective of man reflecting on his childhood in Prague in the early years of World W...
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Courage for Every Day
A passionate communist worker is discouraged by the changing political climate and the failure of hi...
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Teddy Bear
Jirka, Roman, and Ivan have been friends since school. Today they are about 35 and, although they we...
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To Make a Comedy Is No Fun
Documentary feature about Czech director Jiří Menzel, featuring Menzel himself as well as Miloš Form...
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Hotel for Strangers
A gifted poet checks into a Gothic hotel in hopes of meeting the woman with whom he has long been en...
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The Little Apocalypse
An unknown Polish writer can't publish his novels, so his ex-wife decides to help him and get some o...
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The Sunken Cemetery
Ivan, in his early forties, returns, after many years of absence to his native town - a typical Midd...
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How to Deserve a Princess
A fairy tale of three brothers who try to save a princess kidnapped by an evil wizard....
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The Interpreter
80-year-old Ali Ungar comes across a book by a former SS officer describing his wartime activities i...
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Crime in the Night Club
The theft of a pearl necklace and subsequent murder took place at the Tartaros cabaret. All this cou...
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Zimní víla
Kateřina works at an inn run by her evil stepmother. One day, she meets a young man she doesn't know...
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30 Maidens and Pythagoras
A musical starring Jiří Menzel (whose part is sung by Achilles Michailidis) as a math and physics te...
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Švédská zápalka
The aging police commissioner, who has a twenty-five-year-old fiancée, Olga, is disturbed at his six...
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Daisies
Two teenage girls embark on a series of destructive pranks in which they consume and destroy the wor...
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Jiří Menzel: 7 Questions
An idiosyncratic reflection on the film Larks on a String and its history, shot by it's director Jir...
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Bulldogs and Cherries
The dreaded Italian mafioso, Marian Labuda, will also be convinced. Mafioso Carmello was guilty of t...
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Defendant
Managers at the construction of a big hydro plant are accused of having embezzled money....
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CzechMate: In Search of Jiří Menzel
An epic exploration of the Czechoslovak New Wave cinema of the 1960s and 70s, structured around a se...
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Povídka Malostranská
A young man studying law finds a place to stay with a young conductor, thinking that he will find an...
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Setkání v Praze, s vraždou
After many years, Anka Lomnická, a former countess and emigrant, arrives in Prague. By chance, she f...
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The Elementary School
The time is 1945-46. 10 year old Eda and his friend Tonda live in a small village outside Prague. In...
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Útek do Budína
The love story of students Jana and Tomáš begins in Prague just after the establishment of the First...
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Als Großvater Rita Hayworth liebte
The story of a family that is forced to flee the ČSSR in 1969 and seeks a new home in Germany....
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Strange Creatures
A parable for the end of totalitarianism. Three protagonists - a high official, a secretary, and a ...
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