Oto Ševčík

A German Platoon is explored through the brutal fighting of the Battle of Stalingrad. After half of their number is wiped out and they're placed under the command of a sadistic captain, the platoon lieutenant leads his men to desert. The platoon members attempt escape from the city, now surrounded by the Soviet Army.

Mikolás and his brother Adam end up with a young German hostage of noble blood during a robbery. While their clan prepares for the wrath of the German king, Mikolás is sent to pressure his neighbor Lazar into a defense pact. Persuasion fails and he abducts Lazar's daughter Marketa on the eve of her initiation as a nun in an act of vengeance.

Billy Pilgrim, a veteran of the Second World War, finds himself mysteriously detached from time, so that he is able to travel, without being able to help it, from the days of his childhood to those of his peculiar life on a distant planet called Tralfamadore, passing through his bitter experience as a prisoner of war in the German city of Dresden, over which looms the inevitable shadow of an unspeakable tragedy.

Stage mime Antoine Moreau is compelled by the Gestapo to put on a performance for the children of Terezin, a "model" concentration camp, to convince the Red Cross observers that the camp is truly what it seems. Reluctant at first, Moreau slowly learns the true nature of the camp, including the meaning of the "transports" on which people leave. With a world-class orchestra (made up of people interned in the camp) and a cast of children, Moreau stages a show to end all shows.

A frightening atmosphere, full of chilling dampness and darkness, follows the fate of a desperate searcher who tries in vain to unravel the supposed secret of the altarpiece...

Set in Prague during the years leading up to World War II, this family saga tells the story of a cobbler named Vincenc Bursik (Vladimir Mensik), who uproots his clan from the country to the city, only to suffer the loss of his wife and the failure of his shoe business within months. When his daughter moves away to go live with a wealthy businessman as his mistress, Vincenc is left to take care of his two sons, who spend their days in a secret garden vying for the affections of a teenage girl.

In autumn 1941, Reich Protector Reinhard Heydrich’s brutal rule in occupied Bohemia and Moravia fuels Czech resistance. In spring 1942, the government-in-exile sends trained paratroopers led by Lt. Král on a mission to assassinate him. Masters Strnad and Vyskočil ambush Heydrich’s open Mercedes in Prague’s Libeň district, mortally wounding him despite a jammed submachine gun. Their success triggers harsh Nazi reprisals, mass executions, and an intense manhunt for the operatives.

The film, 'The Spring Of Life', brings to light a little-known operation of the Nazi SS, started just before the outbreak of World War II. Through the careful selection and re-education of young women, it was the Nazi's mad dream to create an Aryan 'master race'.

Polish socialist and Marxist Rosa Luxemburg works tirelessly in the service of revolution in early 20th century Poland and Germany. While Luxemburg campaigns for her beliefs, she is repeatedly imprisoned as she forms the Spartacist League offering a new vision for Germany.

The boisterous good humor of Jurmala, the nickel-mine owner, is, if anything, only barely dented by the raging battles in Finland before, during and after World War Two. In fact, everywhere he goes, he meets prospective customers on all sides of the conflict with his all-inclusive greeting "Friends, Comrades." Indeed, the resource he is wrenching from the earth's bowels is necessary to all forms of industrial activity, and is especially necessary for military applications. Thus, he has no reason to fear that he will ever run out of customers. This doesn't prevent him from using every possible means to entice them. At home, his relationship with his wife is not so prosperous, and they resort to some extraordinary means to try and keep on an even keel.

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.

In this movie, TV sets are full of life. If a person is in TV (e.g. because it was filmed on the street) it has a double that's right in the TV set. This double needs energy from the true character to survive. Each time, the real human watches TV, his Double will pull life energy from him. So there's a mysterious Death-serial. Many persons die in front of their TV set and nobody knows why. Olda, the main character, is one of the persons, that get more and more weak. He is near death, till Fisarek, the natural healer appears. He teaches Olda how he can resist this magic force and how he can fight it.

For the Novák and Bartáček families, money is king, and they'll do just about anything to get it. While René Novák pitches his parents a lucrative scheme to swindle as many people with the last name Novák in the country as possible, the Bartáček clan decides to pretend to be much poorer than they really are in order to siphon some dollars from an American relative. And it doesn't take long before these separate scams start to intertwine.

The Czech film Svítalo All Night was made to commemorate the 35th anniversary of the liberation of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet Army and is dedicated to all those who fought and gave their lives in Prague in the May Uprising of 1945. Behind the historical events, the creators see mainly their simple, unassuming participants. Thus, we are presented with a number of apt portraits, whether it is the central hero Dr. Soukup and nurse Daniela on the side of the fighting Czechs, or a captain and a simple private in a Red Army unit coming to the aid of the fighting Prague, or an old, war-weary German major, who only realises the senselessness of the war at the sight of a fanatical, cynical lieutenant for whom Nazi ideology represents the meaning of life.

Prague 1994, hotbed of international profiteers. Here you can still find buyers for discarded everyday objects, here you can still buy cheap houses - provided you can find a Czech straw man. Joint venture, a rogue comedy in which everyone believes they are smarter than the other and everyone hopes to win their dirty game at the other's expense.

Fairy tale about young cobbler Jíra, who had fashioned wings from leather in order to rescue princess Jasnenka from the tower of the royal castle, where her father had closed her to to save her from the evil witch and her daughter Cernava.

Oldrich is the runt of his village, beaten by his father, bullied by the other boys. But he has imagination on his side, and a wiry toughness they can’t defeat. The village is in turmoil, because the Nazi occupiers have just retreated and the Red Army is advancing. Oldrich dodges amid the mayhem and panic, taking his share of blows but always managing to stay one step ahead.

Two aspiring car racers have a big dream: they want to make a journey to the heart of Africa. But their value system is severely skewed, and one of them is willing to steal to do it. What's more, he causes a car accident, from which he tries to escape, and ends up in prison.

In the bleak autumn mountains of the Beskydy Mountains, a dramatic story set in the wartime November 1944 takes place. Seven refugees join forces with partisans, but during a joint sabotage operation - blowing up a bridge - they discover they have a traitor in their midst. Brought to the mountains by a variety of motivations, the men suspect each other while fighting for their lives with an advancing German detachment armed to the teeth...

The distinctive artist, typographer, and writer Josef Váchal is known to the public primarily for his Blood Novel. The surrealistic exuberance of this defense of 19th-century pulp fiction caught the attention of Jaroslav Brabec and his colleagues, who found a corresponding image of 20th-century "trash." The authors' interest focuses primarily on the silent film era, with a journey through the history of cinema continuing through the advent of sound film to the present day (auteur cinema of the 1960s, modern horror), formally employing techniques such as tinted film. The versatile parody intertwines a colorful plot with the story of the author (Váchal/Paseky), who comments on and creates his book, and is further split in the plot into the characters of Fragonard and the Master. As with Váchal, reality increasingly enters the fiction, so that the only "happy ending" turns out to be the artist's finished work.

Happily ever after has a bumpy start for a young couple in a magical land when the husband is sent off to battle by a jealous prince.

Biography of the life of Guillaume Apollinaire.

The shoemaker, Lájošek Cína, is a naive good-for-nothing with his heart on his sleeve, who, as the day grows long, never leaves his shop, where he also sleeps, and his only company is a small stray kitten. One day he is approached by a peculiar truck driver, Martin, who immediately adopts Lájošek as his new driver and becomes his life guide with a plan to rebuild his peaceful life from the ground up. In the Žižkov colony at Krejcárk he meets the charming Magda, with whom Lájošek falls in love and begins to live with her and her four children. Soon after, they are expecting their own and their life would seem ideal, but every happiness comes at a price...

In May 1945, a woman in Marienbad reports a murder - committed in 1933 against the German emigrant Professor Lessing. She also names the murderer. Against the wishes of his superior, who does not feel responsible for this case - it was a fascist femicide - Inspector Šedý picks up the trail and arrests the murderer, the German Eckert. Eckert was a fugitive at the trial in 1933, and now the evidence is no longer available. Nevertheless, Šedý does everything he can to convict him. He finds witnesses who support him - anti-fascists, but also former collaborators who want to clear themselves. Reconstructing the case at the crime scene, Šedý is able to prove that Eckert was at least an accessory. He is convicted. After his release from prison, Eckert goes to West Germany, where he demands compensation from his former clients.

Emperor Francis Joseph I is about to arrive in Prague, and among those who came to Stromovka to welcome him is Veronika Pavlitová. She wants to submit a request for clemency for her imprisoned father to the emperor, because she is barely able to support herself and her siblings on the meager salary of a seamstress. By chance, the girl meets Božena Němcová, whom she admires immensely. She becomes her friend and confidant for a while. However, police director Paümann, who has been following Božena Němcová for a long time, takes advantage of the naivety of the young girl. Veronika, in her simple-mindedness, tells him many things. Only later will she understand how she was abused.

This feature film based on the events of 1938 is a chronicle of the futile efforts of the Czechoslovak president Edvard Benes (Jirí Pleskot), politicians and ordinary citizens, to save the independence and the territorial integrity of the state from the advance of Hitler's Germany. On the 29th of March 1938 the leader of the Sudeten Germans Henlein (Werner Ehrlicher) has a meeting with Hitler (Gunnar Möller). Hitler orders him to intensify pressure on the Czechoslovak government. On the 24th of April in Carlsbad, the Sudetendeutsche Partei (Sudeten German Party) decides upon eight demands that are unacceptable to the Czechoslovak President, since they would ultimately lead to the break-up of the Republic. Benes still shows a certain willingness to negotiate, and Henlein resents this. The Germans are determined to make further negotiations impossible through incidents and violence.

In the aftermath of World War II, a soldier takes charge of a manor formerly owned by a German family and falls in love with the daughter, now a maid. Their relationship forces him to confront the tension between his love and his conscience.

Telling the prisoners of a death camp. Boxer Tony Majer, who got into a concentration camp for a fight with the Gestapo, remembers the murderous work in quarries, on the cruel torture of the Nazis and prison solidarity that helped him survive.

When a volunteer police helper is too proactive, he causes more confusion than good. The unfortunate man has no idea what the testimony of an unreliable witness can do...

Jan Zika is the legendary hero of the communist resistance movement during World War II and leading functionary of the second underground Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia.

This film, chronicling the last days of Czech resistance fighter Maruska Kuderikova (played by Magda Vasaryova), is based on her diaries. Though she was tortured and eventually executed by the Nazis, her diaries indicate that she was optimistic for the humanity of her captors and did not by any means hate them. Told with simple dignity, this film makes clear why Maruska became a national hero.

A communist agent, who has successfully caught on with the stupidly gullible American secret services, does not have it easy - he is threatened with exposal, but he still rescues a Czech scientist whom the evil imperialists wanted to kidnap. It was supposed to be a psychological portrait of an intelligence officer under intense stress, yet convinced of his truth...

At the year 1946, the time of the Nuremberg Process. One of the main actors of the Second World War, who reportedly committed suicide, Adolf Hitler is, however, missing. The Czech doctor Herman (Karel Höger) is kidnapped from Prague and driven to the sanatorium of Professor Rolf Harting (Jirí Vrstála). The sanatorium is a disguised military stronghold, most probably occupied by a Nazi garrison, with prison cells and an execution chamber in the basement. At night, Herman is taken to a patient in whom he, to his horror, recognizes Hitler (Fritz Diez).

In the winter of 1944, chief of surgery at a small-town Czech hospital is suspected of Nazi collaboration by his community.

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.

The opera lady singer Ema Destinnová is in all her splendor at the American stages. But in Europe there rages war and she decides to return home to Bohemia.

Film makes the creative process visible by letting its narrative flow in the mind of a foreign director who is researching a film about Franz Kafka in Prague. Based on the principle of dreams and free association, segments unfold that deal with the various points of view that Kafka's work, personality and fate offer. In the labyrinth of his mind, the fictional director projects himself into situations from the author's life, with Kafka himself as his guide. At the same time, he delves into the history of the persecution of the Jews and glimpses the monstrosity of the bureaucratic apparatus that Kafka anticipated but could not have foreseen the monstrous size and function it would grow to a few years after his death in the institutionalized genocide and overall machinery of Nazism.

In a South Bohemian village in the middle of silver ponds and dark forests lives Jindřich (Radek Valenta), who one day goes out into the world with a firm decision to free the cursed princess. On the way, he reaches a haunted mill, where the beautiful Eliška (Andrea Černá) lives with her father. Eliška likes the young man, so she tells him that the cursed princess is in the pond and Jindřich remains in the mill as a helper. However, the devil and the waterman, who like Eliška, don't like that. With the help of various intrigues and incantations, they try to expel Jindřich from the mill, but soon a third groom appears there - an old rich man. However, since Eliška rejects all the suitors, the miller's father gets angry and gives her an ultimatum: either she chooses a suitor herself by the full moon, or the one who asks for her hand first gets her. So a fight ensues between the grooms...

Fifty-year-old Ondřej Bozděch delivers coal around Prague's Žižkov district and he loves it more than anything. He has spent his whole life here and knows all the cellars. He lives his ordinary life among the Žižkov tenement houses, enjoying the joys and sorrows of his teenage daughter Markéta and his restless son Ondra. His best friend is his driver Karel, a former mathematician who once had to leave his job at a research institute for political reasons. Although Karel is an engineer and a completely different person than the straightforward Ondrej, he has become almost a member of the Bozděch family over time. But times are changing. The old houses of Žižkov disappear one by one, Markéta has to get married and Karel is offered to return to his original profession. Ondřej has to stop and think about what kind of life he is living...

When rumors spread about a "child prodigy" among the Mozarts in Salzburg, the archbishop orders an investigation in which the seven-year-old Wolfgang has to demonstrate his talent before a committee of scholars. Soon afterwards, Leopold Mozart and his son are traveling all over Europe to play for patrons and admirers. The new Archbishop of Salzburg, Count Colloredo, is not very enthusiastic about Mozart and dismisses him. Mozart marries Constanze Weber, settles in Vienna and has his first successes, earning him commissions and the goodwill of Josef II. In the last years of his life, his situation worsens; Mozart runs into financial difficulties and health problems, but still works incessantly.

A broadly drawn ideological epic set in the summer of 1947 in the borderlands of northern Bohemia: reactionary elements plot to undermine postwar social change while committed local communists struggle to organize workers and defend the emerging order. The narrative follows several archetypal figures—steadfast party activists, wary peasants, and obstructive reactionaries—whose clashes illustrate the claimed inevitability of working-class victory under communist leadership.

An army deserter and a soon-to-be high school graduate embark on an ill-fated romance in this musical film set in the '60s.

During World War II, a German university professor creates a spy ring that supplies the Allies with information about Nazi plans...

It is almost twenty years after the war. Wounds of the past that have never fully healed, but are still carried by many in their hearts. Marie Vláčilová, a survivor of one of the prison camps in Germany, also carries the traumas of the time with her. Now, so many years later, a mass grave of prisoners from that camp has been found and investigators visit Marie to get any information they can from her about the camp. With her important information, she is then to become a crown witness for the prosecution in Germany and now prepares to travel. But this brings back more and more unpleasant memories - especially of her daughter Paula, who has been through German re-education and hardly knew her mother after the reunion...

A man and a woman from a different planet come to the Earth to get a cure for a disease that is apparently threatening to eradicate their civilisation.

February 1948. The struggle of decisive social forces for the heart of Europe.