The future communist journalist Julius Fučík had a stimulating childhood and youth in a working-class environment, when his moral maturity was already showing. The authors of the film recall that the young Julek was a star of the suburban operetta scene, and in three episodes they depict him both in his early childhood and already at the gymnasium, when the outbreak of the World War shaped his determination.
It doesn't help to have an exacerbated situation like a family losing their only son - killed in a motorcycle accident. His parents, however, don't know the girl who survived, now being treated at a local hospital. Especially the honest and principled father, presented as a model worker and responsible official, cannot come to terms with her superficiality and carelessness, with her dubious life values...
February 1948. The struggle of decisive social forces for the heart of Europe.
After many decades in Germany, Marie Hahn will come to Prague to meet her relatives and friends. She learns unflattering information about her husband's behaviour during the German occupation, she suffers health problems, but even her daughter is not interested in helping her mother...
Soviet engineer Kuznecov is coming to Prague as an expert on work with the tunneling shield in construction of the metro. He is returning after more than thirty years. In May 1945 as a young soldier in the Red Army he was seriously injured in the liberation of Prague and while recovering experienced a great love with a young teacher called Vera.
A 50-year-old foreign trade executive meets a 20-year-old student at a trade fair in Brno. The relationship triggers confrontational memories of his own youth and ideals...
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.
The forest worker František Hrubý, a poor, hard-working man, lives with his granddaughter in a lonely cottage. Despite being in his sixties, he is still a furiant who does not let anyone talk to him, but talks to everyone himself. His desire to interfere in the lives of his companion, daughter, granddaughter or friends is rooted in his fear of loneliness and death. He also can't accept that the work he has loved all his life has become too much of a strain...
The blacksmith Kale loves the beautiful Aranka, but his mother does not wish their love, because Aranka is a witch. During the evening festival, when young people jump over the fire, Aranka gets lost. At that time, Master John is driving through the countryside and gets lost, finds a fireplace and Aranka appears to him in a lit candle. Enchanted, he brings her home, where Aranka comes to life again. Meanwhile, her lover searches in vain for the girl. Will the two meet again?
Several big-city teenagers are falsely accused of vandalizing a valuable organ, casting light on the hypocrisy of the adult world.
Biography of the life of Guillaume Apollinaire.
The story follows three middle‑aged gentlemen—Antonín, Canon Roch, and Major Hugo—who while away their rainy summer days at a neglected riverside spa. Their languid routine is briefly enlivened by a traveling magician and his assistant Anna, whom they vie to impress with whimsical flair.
Who among us would not want to find themselves, at least for a short time, in the romantic era of knightly duels, a time when friendship, love, and honor were valued above all else—even life itself? In today's fairy tale, we invite you to step into this era, into a mysterious world of magic and suspense. The young and likable heir to the throne, Prince Kornel, returns from enemy captivity. However, his journey home is full of unexpected twists and turns – both joyful and sad. In the woods, he meets a beautiful stranger whom he cannot forget. Upon his return to the royal castle, he learns that much has changed during his absence. His father has died under mysterious circumstances, and Kornel's cousin now rules the kingdom...
In post-WWII Communist Czechoslovakia, several characters considered bourgeois are sentenced to work in a junkyard for rehabilitation. Among them is a young man who pines for a female convict.
Young script-writer Frantisek (Petr Cepek) is hired to write a film script based on the successful novel Looking Back. He meets with the novel's female author, a University professor and writer named Olga Machová (Jirina Trebická), approximately ten-years-older than him. In the beginning, they do not understand each other at all. Frantisek is a skeptic experiencing a moral crisis, unsatisfied with both his work and his private life - he lives separated from his wife and has no deeper feelings for his numerous lovers. He even gets drunk from time to time and breaks the public peace. Olga is lonesome, too, but considers her life fulfilled.
Sliding, skiing, snow forts, snowball fights, in short, winter is the right season for the children from the village under the Šibeničák hill to have fun. Their leader has always been Zrzek, the son of the local undertaker. But then Myšák, whose father had become the chairman of the agricultural cooperative, moved into the village, and he pulled all the boys to his side, especially because he could take the boys on the horses his father sometimes lent him. Proud Zrzek left the group rather than submit to Myshak. Only his friend Barbora remained faithful to him, helping him catch birds, especially the proverbial black raven.
Three detective stories, three different views of life and death... Collection of three horror short stories.
Sixth-grade pupil Katka daydreams during a math class about being Snow White and being freed by a prince who looks very much like Dzery from the eighth grade. Katka, her girl friends Lenka and Martina, and her fellow-pupils Franta, Joska and freckled Vrabcák, have spent five years going to the same little one-class school in their home mountain village of Pastvina. Their kind teacher Smetácek was very understanding about their games and fantasies, but he didn't teach them much about arithmetic. They are now laughed at for their ignorance by the strict Bidlo, their new teacher at the near-by little town. As he does every year, Smetácek is preparing a theatre performance with the local children. Katka suggests the fairytale about Snow White
A group of soldiers is supposed to ensure the smooth nighttime passage of the military convoy through Prague, but things turn out differently. Eloquent young men convince the good-natured commander to sign a leave of absence, and the main character is left alone in the middle of a housing estate...
A group of children from a working-class neighbourhood in Pilsen search for a way to effectively protest against the rampage of the First World War and the oppressive state power...
In this character study by Czech director Frantisek Vlacil, a stout middle-aged physician whose marriage has come apart establishes a practice in a small town. Gradually he's drawn into the lives of his patients—a childless couple, a pregnant girl with a stern mother, the son of a duck farmer—and each relationship reveals a bit more about him and the idyllic but insular community.
"Everybody needs to feel that they belong to someone - and that's what our little František can give..." These are the words of childless Věra, who, together with her husband Karel, decides to take in an abandoned boy from an orphanage. The couple have tried many things in their lives: studying, finding a job. But none of these have fully satisfied them. But they have managed to create a home for themselves and now they want to offer it to a third child... Vera and her parents are delighted with the boy, who is still only a trial. But Karel, who himself lives with a sense of failure in his life, is finding it difficult and slow to adjust to the new member of the family...
The lives of 7 friends in a small Czech town from 1945 to some time after 1958.
The 19-year-old volleyball player has been bedridden for a long time due to a spinal injury. The self-confident and energetic girl has time to recap her life and short sporting career so far...
The main characters are a young psychologist Doubravka and a village youth, Honza Macháček. He is a tractor driver who temporarily lost his driver's license in a crazy bet, so he now herds a cooperative herd of cows, she is at the cottage with her boy Boba, who is not very successful in studying medicine and is currently preparing for his remedial exams. Honza's immediacy, optimism and approach to life and work contrast sharply with the selfish, weak-willed and unbalanced Boba, and Doubravka increasingly realizes that her feelings for Boba have disappeared and that she actually loves Honza. The question is how her somewhat conservative family will view such a game.
Vladimír Menšík in a dramatic story of a suddenly rich peasant. The play tells the story of the tragic fate of A. Špáta, who, as a poor second time, unexpectedly inherited 15 thousand gulden. He is convinced that the capital ensures him for life that he will live "like Prince Rohan". He submits to his proud mother and underestimates a good and modest woman. He buys two houses in the countryside, hosts sycophantic neighbors in a pub - he tries to live like a rich man. The classic of Czech realistic prose K. V. Rais, whose novella "Špáta" was adapted for television by J. Z. Novák, realistically affected a person in relation to property and his desire to rise socially. In Špáta, he created a social type that surpassed his time.
The 11-year old Jakub is living in a children's home, when he is picked up by his father. The father has been "away" for four years, the boys mother doesn't want the child. Jakub gradually finds out, that his father is hiding a secret from him. But they gradually manage to build a warm relationship and a promising new life in the city.
Set in World War 2 as the Germans occupy Czechoslovakia, teenage Emilka's father is murdered by the Nazis, but she is selected for special treatment by virtue of being blonde. She is billeted with the commandant of a concentration camp near the Baltic coast, where his kindness towards her provokes his wife's jealousy, but is compromised when Emilka witnesses his brutality towards the prisoners.
A story about young girl Hanka who doesn't have parents and is forced to spend most of her time in a hospital bed.
A psychological drama exploring the notion of the doctor as a moral authority, who within the framework of their everyday work must face questions of life and death. The film is adapted from a novel by Valja Stýblová, in which the author draws upon her personal experiences as a former neurosurgeon. The protagonist of this drama is an ageing professor, based at a Prague neurological clinic, who is haunted by issues concerning his own principles and values, and also by the case of a young patient, Víťa, afflicted with an inoperable tumour.
A drug dealer named Mikes, who lives in Prague and longs to escape his own clichéd life.
Biography of Karel Čapek.
Ten short unrelated stories that move chronologically through Slovakia's twentieth-century history as seen from the perspective of life in small towns and villages.
A professor reunites with an old friend who inspires him to return to Czechoslovakia for the first time since he emigrated years ago.
The TV play tells the story of a woman who committed financial fraud at work. But she did not appropriate the money for herself; she was lured into the wrong act by dedication and a great, almost monkey-like love for her children. However, it is her teenage children who cannot understand that their mother, their model of decency and honesty, who taught them to safely distinguish right from wrong, has so disappointed them. The search for understanding and forgiveness will be very difficult.
Young prisoner Jan, nicknamed Roughboy (Petr Cepek), tries to commit suicide. He was imprisoned for a fight in which he injured a functionary of the National Committee and for stealing material but actually by the blame for this crime was pinned on him by the road-builders in whose group he worked. The prison doctor knows that Jan is an emotionally deprived person who never knew his parents and spent all his childhood - except one year with foster-parents - in orphanages, homes for youth and reform schools. He arranges a five-day holiday for Jan, who wants to find his mother's grave.
Once upon a time, there was a royal windmill where the queen and her son, the young King Sebastian, lived. Sebastian was long past the age of marriage, but he was much more interested in his collection of curiosities than in girls and ruling. One day, a simple girl caught the prince's eye at the market. She alone will become queen, Sebastian thought to himself. Little did he know that his chosen one, the kind and diligent Mariana, had a lazy and envious sister, Adriana, and that the two girls, born at the same hour, were indistinguishable from one another.
Various customs prevail at royal courts. For us mere mortals, it would certainly be incomprehensible and ridiculous to see how important the prince's long nose was for the entire kingdom. That long nose, which was, incidentally, very unattractive, represented the height of nobility, and anyone who did not have one could be ashamed. When Prince Longnose wanted to get married, he took great care in choosing his bride and, above all, made sure that she also had a sufficiently long nose. But then something unpleasant happened to him. What was it, you ask?
Fairy tale based on J. Š. Kubín tells the story of the forest fairy Milena, who is punished by the Queen of the Fairies for loving King Silventus and giving birth to her son Václav. Milena becomes a green light, and little Václav is first taken in by his foster parents, then into the king's service, unaware that the king himself is his father.
Seven seemingly unconnected fairy tales - glued together only by folklore, mood, color and light - make up this Czech collection of visual poetry. The original piece of literature, written by Karel Jaromír Erben in 1853, contained twelve tales.
A theatrical recording of the 1984 production of Shakespeare's famous play by the ABC Theatre, based on the first translation of this English classic by Martin Hilský, today's most performed Shakespearean translator.
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.
In the 1980s, the building themes were transformed into bipolar moral dilemmas involving overly ambitious individuals who wanted to excel at any cost. The hero is the head of a demolition crew that demolishes large buildings, initially a sympathetic young man who, in the pursuit of career and accolades, begins to transgress the boundaries of what was then called socialist morality and legality. He gradually finds himself at odds with the principles of ordinary but honest people. The narrative's bland, proclamatory film is closely connected to its time of creation, and there are hardly any more timeless insights to be found.
A budding teacher comes from Prague to the South Bohemian district town where her fiancé Jakub, a young promising engineer at the local paper mill, lives. Petra is getting to know her new colleagues at school and the children in her new class, and is practicing hard with the Komenium music group, whose members she has known since her studies. She also gets to know Jakub's colleagues and the director of the paper mill, to whose position Jakub would like to be appointed after his retirement. It is this desire for a high position that leads Jakub to behave and act in a way that Petra cannot approve of.
Lucie Rýdlová is found dead at a destroyed car after a night accident. The seat position shows that she cannot have been driving, and the dissection proves that she had died about four hours after the accident. It is for sure that a timely medical assistance could have saved her life. A pretty young tennis player Lucie lived at her grandmother, because her parents had been working abroad. Criminalists found out that the girl was going out with the interpreter Valenta (Eduard Cupák), who was twenty years older than her, divorced and a bit egoistic man.
Václav, a successful man in his fifties, falls in love with his charming young secretary Miluška and leaves his wife Milada, his adult daughter and grandchildren. He believes that the new relationship will bring him what the stereotype of a long marriage did not bring him... However, the new marriage is marked from the very beginning not only by the age difference, but also by different views on life and the responsibilities associated with it...
At the end of August, a young woman is chased by an angry mob of hooligans under the windows of a bus because she decides to tear down a poster grossly insulting her husband, the staunch communist and deputy Balcar. She only gets a defence from the prosecutor Ronešová, who decides to convict and prosecute the perpetrators and bystanders of the unfortunate event. The principled Ronešová is oblivious to personal problems and sets out to fight against the relics of a happily extinguished social movement, with the right-wing defence lawyer Kahan being no match for her.
The story, set in the context of the construction of long-distance power lines, captures the life and work of a group of fitters who come to a mountain village to electrify the local cooperative. After being transferred to a lower-paid and "demeaning" job, the group's relationships begin to break down. Debut film of Slovakian director Martin Hollý.
About the love of two princes for one princess. The archer whose arrow flies the furthest will win the hand of the beautiful princess and ascend to the royal throne. So decided the king when both his sons fell in love with the same princess and both wanted to rule. But no one suspected that the arrow that would help one of the princes win his beloved and rule the land was magical.
H. Ch. Andersen's story was the basis for the narrative film 'Of John and the Wonderful Friend', in which the 'magic wand' plays an important plot-forming role. With its help, Jan overcomes the magician Magnus and rescues the princess Agnes.
Rada Heumann, a successful criminal investigator, is searching for a serial killer of children. But that is just one of the secrets revealed in this story by writer Ladislav Fuks. With psychological precision, the author also explores Heumann's family background and his father's despotism, of which the younger of the two sons becomes a victim. Viki, a boy about to graduate from high school, feels humiliated by his father's dictates. He decides to take revenge on his father by questioning his infallibility as a criminal investigator.
A recording of a theatre production directed by Jan Kačer from 1967.