Jan Budař

Soulmates Eric and Shelly are brutally murdered when the demons of her dark past catch up with them. Given the chance to save his true love by sacrificing himself, Eric sets out to seek merciless revenge on their killers, traversing the worlds of the living and the dead to put the wrong things right.

In December 1941, Czech soldiers Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš parachute into their occupied homeland to assassinate Nazi officer Reinhard Heydrich.

The story of fifteenth century Czech icon and warlord, Jan Zizka, who defeated armies of the Teutonic Order and the Holy Roman Empire.

Conceived as a kaleidoscopic mosaic, the film follows the imprint Franz Kafka left on the world from his birth in 19th-century Prague to his death in post-WW1 Vienna.

A bitter sweet comedy that follows a highly appointed Chancellor who set to step down from his position after years of service to his country. With just two last days left to enjoy his palatial villa before he is finally evicted, his situation gradually goes from bad to worse.

Sometimes magic will help on the path to power, sometimes to beauty, but the greatest magic is true love, which will overcome all obstacles, above intrigue and evil... Ondro is well on his way to becoming an acclaimed baker. Princess Anna also has a clear idea of ​​her life, and it is miles away from the wedding with the suitor chosen for her by her uncle Árpád. The greedy wizard Láb does not shy away from anything; a bag of gold would be suitable enough for him, so under pressure from Árpád, he casts a spell on the king himself. What will the kingdom do without a good and just ruler? Will Láb manage to fix what he has ruined with his spells?

Czech literature teacher Josef Tkaloun, who is past retirement age, realises one day that he no longer understands his pupils, and so he quits… dramatically. What he does not predict is that in doing this he will lose his sense of place in society.

A quietly comic look at a Madrid housewife's attempt to escape from her mundane and tedious existence. Encountering mostly impersonal bureaucracy, she has no specific plan for what she wants to do, just the fervent hope that she will find the adventure she's so desperately seeking.

A Czech journalist joins a Prague radio station what broadcasts Nazi propaganda in order to protect his Jewish wife. However, as the Nazi rule over Czechoslovakia calls for more and more collaboration, his relationship with his wife spirals downward.

The docudrama Lone Wolf follows the life and combat experiences of RAF fighter pilot Josef František. Director Ondřej Veverka presents the story of a pilot who made his name whilst serving with the RAF’s 303rd Polish Fighter Squadron during the Battle of Britain. The film portrays Josef František not only as a flying ace with eighteen aerial victories during the Battle of Britain, but also as a man plagued by inner doubts yet possessing exceptional courage.

Czechoslovakia, 1941. As the war continues, Reich Protector Reinhard Heydrich arrives in Nazi-occupied Prague and establishes a regime of terror that will force freedom fighters to act. But the price to pay will be too high.

Operation Danube was the cover name for the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact armies in August 1968. The fleet of Polish tanks which arrive to liberate their neighbor, ostensibly threatened by a counter-revolution, includes the old tank nicknamed Ladybird, which is the last to leave the barracks.

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.

Prince Louis Ottomar Charles XII, born Noble, is very close to his loving mother, Queen Ludmilla. However, Prince Louis is already a bit too old, he is 39 years old. He's afraid of almost everything, doesn't want to get married, and spends most of his life hanging around the sumptuous castle and adjacent fields. The wise King Radomil therefore prepares an unexpected gift for him - the prince wakes up one morning in the forest in ordinary clothes and, accompanied by the rough knight Hudroval, he is to go out into the world to learn what life is all about and perhaps finally grow up. On his great journey of adventure, he will encounter things he has only read about in books. He will meet a powerful wizard, evil witches, a ghost, and the Lady Death herself... and maybe even find the love of his life. What will Mummy say about all this? And will Father King be happy?

What is the meaning of life? What is love, humor, fear and death? Is it all just a dream? Who are we and where are we heading? Will we wake up, will we remember?

“The fact that I’m playing myself doesn’t mean that it’s me.” Four old schoolmates, today well-known Czech actors (Pavel Liška, Tomáš Matonoha, Josef Polášek and Marek Daniel), decide to make a movie together. Their ambitious colleague Jan Budař takes up directing duties and financing has arrived from Poland. What started out pleasantly enough, however, soon goes awry. Liška’s pronunciation difficulties, Daniel’s alter ego Havlát, and Matonoha’s financial machinations turn the shoot into a fight for survival. More than just a film about friendship and the absurdity of actors’ lives, director Marek Najbrt gives us a witty meditation on reality and illusion, and a unique take on the reality film genre. One of Pavel Liška’s on-set comments (“I didn’t know if I should act as if I were acting, or act as if I weren’t acting, or just not act at all”) illustrates the provocative nature of Najbrt’s subversive, quasi-documentary game.

Libor, a former teacher, enjoys a well-paid position as a bank manager, living in a luxurious villa outside Prague. His business partners are taken into custody and the authorities have a few questions for him to answer. Rather than wait around, he decides to take off to Moravia with his wife and two children. In the process, he pretends that everything is normal, rediscovers the value of family life, meets up with a former colleague lost in provincial obscurity, and becomes the object of a manhunt. Libor is not a criminal type, merely someone who signs cheques and is drawn into a business world failing to recognise its own criminality (he doesn’t even flee the country).

The congenial Vojta is bashful and his family is batty. His short-tempered father, who once failed to swim the English Channel, wants him to be a competing swimmer and his loving mother, a former child ice revue star, sees a talented pianist in her son. But Vojta has completely different priorities - most of all his red-haired classmate Ela, an enchanting synchronized swimmer who is leaving for Paris in November. If Vojta doesn't do something radical, and fast, Ela will disappear behind the Iron Curtain forever. The year is 1989.

What was supposed to be a joyful celebration over the dissolution of Czechoslovakia turns chaotic when the Varchal family discovers that their father betrayed both country and family by working for the secret police. The family members turn against each other.

MURDEROUS TALES is a special effect animated feature film combining live actors with 3D/2D animation, puppets and back projection. It contains three stories: Antonio Cacto, Lighthouse and The Big Man, plus three ultra-short films called Charge the Dragon. Each episode uses different production technology and is in a different genre, but both their form and their content are related. All the episodes are about double standards and the topics of heroism and death. Something very small meets something very big (a tiny knight meets a huge dragon, an old Mexican goblin meets a man, a tiny Professor meets real-life cows, two mobsters meet the Big Man). All these meetings result in the heroic death of the small principal characters. Each script sees heroism and death differently.

The film tells about a small museum, where the economic boom has not yet arrived. It appears as if time has stopped in this national museum, a museum which should serve as a show window for Slovakia. Stuffed animals are covered with dust and the three employees working as caretakers of the huge building look like the museum exhibits themselves.

The movie is based on the narrative of a Czech multimillionaire who achieved success not by stripping companies, making crooked deals and crony-ism, but by blazing his own trail like Schweikesque self-made man. He realizes early on that he has nobody but himself to rely on. During the totalitarian regime of the 80s, he ambles along his oddball path and then experiences the Velvet Revolution atypically, too - in an asylum amidst nut-cases. After the Revolution, he really gets rolling. To Germany and back. To prison and back. To China and back. The intriguing and endless opportunities afforded by the Internet eventually blossom into virtual prosperity. The hero has everything and is even planning a highly unorthodox family. A happy ending is nigh, until everything goes up in smoke, of course...

Josef Loucký is the popular mayor of the village of Sedlčánky and has ambitions to win the prestigious title of Village of the Year. The village already has almost everything it needs to secure victory. Various parodies of a public library, museum, public swimming pool, and ice rink can be found here. The only thing missing for success is a sewage system. The mayor has been promised a subsidy for the construction of a sewage treatment plant if he has the sewers dug across the entire village within two weeks. Thanks to his efforts, however, the village has a completely new road and sidewalks. So there is only one option left. The sewer system will run through the gardens. Everyone agrees with this plan, except for one person, the mayor's father-in-law, Topol.

The devil's magic quill keeps a tight record of sins. But when this precious artifact is stolen, a demon must find a way to make things right again.

The elements that rule Earth - Air, Fire, Earth and Water - are in their "regular inspection tour". We are following Water, in the form of the Rain Fairy. Traversing the land dressed like a poor woman, she learns that people really have begun focusing mainly on money and that love and goodness are disappearing.

Milan and Goran are two criminals who smuggle illegal immigrants. One night after they complete a smuggle, they discover that one of the immigrants has left a baby behind. Milan and Goran decide to sell the baby to Lubos and Eman, who are responsible for running an illegal baby adoption center. Lubos and Eman make attempts to sell the baby to Miluska and Frantisek, a barren couple.

Black-and-white comedy about two young people who want to lose, finally, their innocence, and about life in a very boring city of Brno ...

When sisters Jana and Anna meet their half-brother at their father's funeral, the siblings' lives entwine as they navigate relationships and setbacks.

In the small Moravian town of Zvěstov, all the men live for historical battles. They represent the French army, led by their mayor Touchyn (Bolek Polívka), who has had a monopoly on the role of Napoleon for years. This time, they are preparing for a big event—the unveiling of a Napoleonic fountain in the neighboring town of Podolí, attended by television crews and journalists. However, the mayor of Podolí has bad news for Touchyn – this time he has hired a real foreign actor to play Napoleon, who looks more like him. Touchyn is offended and decides to ignore the ceremony. He convinces the people of Zvěstov to do the same, but they regret that they have rehearsed for nothing...

Vaclav, the village loser, in his 40's bordering on autism, lives with his widowed mother on the outskirts of the village. He is seen by villagers as the local fool, nothing but a constant pain for them, but there is a skeleton in the village closet concerning his father's death.

New husband Adam reluctantly takes a job with state security in a totalitarian country, thus becoming a secret police agent. This "contract with the devil" helps secure a flat for the happy couple, as well as a prosperous future. However, he soon finds out that he too is under surveillance.

It's nighttime in Prague, 21 August 1968. Soviet troops and tanks are occupying the city - random attacks, soldiers shooting, bodies lying dead on the sidewalk. With an impromptu crew, the director (Karel Roden) captures some unique evidence - material which is, however, worthless in occupied Prague; it has to be shown to the rest of the world. So, while the Soviets are concocting false reports of heartfelt receptions without military resistance for propaganda purposes, the director sets off on a risky trip across the closed Czech-Austrian border to Vienna.

The Dung Beetle is late, the Parasite is asleep and Mrs Larva is more interested in her knitting than the director’s instructions. It’s clear: this amateur theatre company has a long way to go before they can perform their version of "The Insect Play", a famous satirical work from 1922 by the brothers Karel and Josef Čapek which features insects with decidedly human traits: greed, egocentrism, jealousy.

It is April 1945, spring begins and ends the war. German transport heading away from Bohemia.

The royal squire George tastes a bite of a magical snake and understands the language of animals. However, he is guilty of violating his king's order, and so he faces either the death penalty or an uncertain and dangerous journey to find Goldilocks, a princess from a mysterious kingdom in the middle of a lake. He therefore sets off on a journey accompanied by Stephen, with whom he grew up since childhood, and a small dog named Lucky, whose life George saved. George is faced with a whole series of adventures and surprises along the way. He has no idea that Stephen is jealous and is not as sincere a friend as he seemed. Fortunately, George has brave allies, the animals he has helped.

Slovak director Karpatti arrives in Prague to make a name for himself. He has brought all his belongings with him, as he can no longer show his face in Bratislava. Meanwhile, on the roof of an apartment building in Pankrác, Hrubeš and Mareš spit from the seventeenth floor, planning to become important film professionals and longing for love. Then Mareš's grandmother dies, Hrubeš is kicked out of his house by his father, and eleven terminally ill patients do not die. Václav Hrubeš meets President Klaus, and Josef Mareš finds a girlfriend, but for money. At the end, the power goes out for ten minutes throughout Prague 4, and Viliam Karpatti receives an award at the Jihlava Film Festival. It rains for the entire last ten minutes of the film, and planes hover over Prague like phantoms.

Love story against the background of the fall of the Wall. On New Year’s Eve 1989 Maria’s ex-husband turns up on her doorstep. She lives in Rotterdam now and he has just fled crumbling Communism in their homeland. A long flashback makes it clear why he is not welcomed with open arms.

An early 20th-century sultan is introduced to the cinematograph with the help of a former operator for the Lumiere brothers.

Life is not easy for Laika, a dog on the outskirts of a big Russian city. She is caught and forcibly retrained to become a pioneer in astronautics. Soon after her lift-off into space, a number of animals follow that are hurriedly launched from Houston and Baikonur. The animals travel astray, but finally manage, with the help of a black hole, to colonize a faraway planet. After a short period of harmonious, undisturbed co-existence with indigenous life forms, however, first human cosmonaut run ashore on their planet, and their harmonious life, indeed their very survival, are suddenly in jeopardy.

The heavenly student Angelo Žáček doesn't really get the theory. Would he rather prove his abilities in practice? Reforming the sinner Vinck, whom all of heaven has given up on, is child's play for him, and the guardian angel diploma will be in the bag. He is even willing to use methods that are not exactly heavenly. The Master is overcome with despair. Heaven has never seen anything like what the rash Žáček is about to do. The angry teacher sets off after his wayward student to prevent him from committing his unangelic deed. And he might have succeeded, had he arrived a moment earlier. Now the sinner is even closer to hell, and the student will never become a guardian angel. The shaken student, under the Master's supervision, once again sets out to reform the incorrigible Vinck, but this time, if necessary, he will risk his own skin...

In 1980s CSSR, depressed Martin tries to overcome the feeling of being locked up with jazz music.

Sasa is an unsuccessful writer who works as a restaurant critic. His life starts to change when he meets and falls in love with Ines who works in a private sports center. However, things get complicated when he writes a bad review for the restaurant owned by a well-connected man. To get his life in order, Sasa has to face up to all of his character flaws.

Ruth and Magda have been inseparable friends since childhood. They both went to college and both fell in love with the same guy. Ruth has won the fight for love, and has put Magda before the tough decision: to give up Adam and maintain friendship with Ruth, or give preference to his heart? When Adam gets a dream internship abroad and leaves for Austria, Ruth takes his fresh pregnancies and refuses to go with him. But in time, Ruth convinces Magda to start behind Adam and try to get him back. However, Magda exploits the situation, acquires Adam for herself and marries him abroad. After years, Magda returns home and the old injustices come to life.

A good king rules this land, but still things are going from bad to worse. The point is that the greedy Minister of State has an interesting pact with the Devil — for bringing the kingdom into a state of dire poverty and the king to hell, he himself would sit on the throne. And he would have been well nigh successful, were it not for Princess Annie, Filip and magic Apolena — because true love cannot be quelled even by the Devil's machinations.

33-year-old Roman decides to tackle his drug addiction by undergoing group therapy as part of a community holed up on an isolated farm in the Šumava mountains. Twelve people, men and women of varying ages and social status, voluntarily subject themselves to a tough regime under the supervision of three therapists. Many of them have stared death in the face already – overdoses, suicide attempts, and aggression heightened by the use of hard drugs, outwardly affecting even the strongest of them. Each brings something of his past into the group, which he has to experience again, both for himself and for those assembled. Past anguish, wrongs and guilt give rise to new problems: in this thickening atmosphere of suspicion and lies, who can still be trusted? This intimate psychological drama deliberately sets out to break up the tight narrative form through retrospectives in which we learn about the past life of each individual.

In this tense, heart-stopping supernatural-thriller, blonde beauty Eva foresees the brutal murder of her sister, Tereza – with whom she has recently argued – in a dream. Still angry, Tereza refuses to heed her warnings and shortly thereafter dies under gruesome and mysterious circumstances. In mourning and wracked by guilt, Eva moves to another city with her boyfriend. But the increasingly intense and disturbing visions continue to plague her … as well as inexplicable sightings of her dead sibling. In search of an explanation, she realizes that the evil behind her sister’s death is now pursing her!

This fairy tale, full of humor and suspense, begins in a small town where preparations are underway for a theatrical performance. The play tells a local legend about enormous riches hidden deep underground. Many long to find them, but those who set out in search of them never return. The play features two sisters, Kačenka and Barborka, as well as Jakub, a musician and Barborka's jealous boyfriend. The theme of the play also attracts the miserly lord of the castle, Bořivoj Hájek z Hájku, who arrives with his brother Ignác, an eccentric inventor and researcher. And somewhere underground, near the real treasure, sit his three ghostly guards, passing the time by inventing all sorts of pastimes, which the Lord of the Underground does not enjoy at all. His patience will run out the moment the bored guards interfere with human destinies, because of a bet on how the love between Jakub and Barbora will turn out.

Jan Nemec, a leading filmmaker of the Czech New Wave, creates an original portrait of one of the most provocative artists of the 20th century: Toyen (Marie Cerminova). As a female artist, Toyen broke through the male-dominated art world to create paintings and drawings often erotic in nature. She co-founded the surrealist movement in her native Prague, survived the Nazis and the Communists, maintained artistic and personal relationships with artists Jindrich Heisler (whom she hid during WWII) and Jindrich Styrsky.

The inner drama of Jiří Mánka, a forty-year-old cashier at Živnostenská banka, who has artistic talent, both musical and painterly. After his experiences on the battlefields of World War I, he chose a job that provides him with a very good livelihood, but does not satisfy his ambitions. He lives alone with his mother and gets along well with his brother Teodor, with whom he shares a love of music. Jiří's life is shaken up by a chance encounter with a young, attractive girl named Adéla, with whom he feels relaxed and rejuvenated, at least at first...

Ice hockey is a Czech national obsession, and the country's victory over Russia in the 1969 World Championships, the year following the Soviet invasion, is a celebrated moment in its history. In Marek Najbrt's black comedy, the heroic exploits take place only on a black and white tv screen as a group of representative misfits gather and watch the game in a desolate village on the Czech border. While consisting of recognisable types, Najbrt's bleak portrait reveals a world of alcoholism, debt, racism, bigotry, and infidelity that trails behind the dreams of nationalism and bears little resemblance to the fantasies of the new consumerism. A clever and multi-levelled film, it provides a sharp antidote to the reconciliatory charms of the conventional Czech comedy.

A well-known writer now aged 75 is aware of his increasing age and the risk that his literary style will grow worn. His everyday existence is enlivened by characters from his stories, who tend to enter reality in unexpected ways, at various stages of completeness and with all kinds of strange demands.

An comedy set in 1960s Helsinki. The story revolves around Elsa, a resolute hatmaker who is in complete control of her life. Besides running her shop, she sometimes doubles as a fortune teller. When Jan, a Czechoslovakian jazz musician and Elsa's old lover comes to town to perform at a "peace and friendship festival", her well-organised life is jolted out of balance.

The story is about a plumber, who is called Good man from the bones. He is not afraid of any work, he manages all the work he gets. Wittily responds to every situation that befalls him.

The film's main theme is obsession. An obsession with love, with art, originality, copying, with success, money and... with oneself. Sooner or later, if we lose our rational upper hand over it and let ourselves be dragged down by it, every obsession leads to destruction. But it is only when being dragged down, in spite of all the cuts and bruises, that we find a unique DELIGHT, if only for a few short moments - and what else is life really about? It is like a drug. What at first seems to be weak and trivial is capable of expanding and growing into a serious problem that can appear to be absolutely incomprehensible and absurd to those who have never experienced anything like it.

A visual dreamscape of Prague streets, a hallucinatory vision of a world from the operating table for robotic heart surgeries, collaged together with the stories narrated by the mysterious Dr. B, who is a gifted surgeon at the centre of a conspiracy and a criminal ring trafficking in human parts, especially hearts. Because that’s where the world has ended up – humans thirsting for endless lives and shadowy businessmen and dealmakers taking advantage of this hunger. Set to original music by Němec’s student and fellow filmmaker Petr Marek and his band Midi Lidi, the rich soundscape of the film creates a distinct counterpart to the freewheeling visuals shot digitally in 3D. The former Czech president Václav Havel makes an appearance in the film recalling a script he wrote in the 1960s with Němec, his distant cousin, which the present film utilises as a reflecting surface.

On 26 September 1928, Karel Capek and President T.G. Masaryk meet in the gardens of Topolcianky castle to decide about the fate of their joint literary work. Their fiction film dialogue is based on quotes from a future book and their mutual correspondence, considerably freeing the original format of literary conversation from binding conventions. Capek and Masaryk reproach and offend each other, but they also ask key personal questions and questions about the social functions of a writer and politician respectively. "It's a film about two extraordinary men; it's about the fact that emotions can be sometimes more powerful than ideas even in such exceptional people.

In the TV adaptation of Donald Churchill’s play, Jane’s affair comes to light when her lover’s furious wife Marcia threatens to expose her, so Jane persuades their building painter Walter to impersonate her husband and defuse the scandal. Unbeknownst to her, Walter’s a passionate amateur actor who seizes the chance to play Othello, unleashing a madcap parade of misunderstandings as both women lavish affection on their faux spouse to prove who’s superior.

The story of the dramatic fate of the Czech climber Josef speck and his comrades, executed by the Nazis in April 1945 in Theresienstadt.

A short story film presenting four micro-stories of Prague residents and visitors: Panorama, The Lawyer, The Ordinary Timetable, The Secret of the Monument.