Pavel Šimčík

Set in Stalin-era Soviet Union, a disgraced MGB agent is dispatched to investigate a series of child murders -- a case that begins to connect with the very top of party leadership.

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 TV personality returns home for her sister's wedding and realizes she still has feelings for an ex-boyfriend who is now her sister's fiancé.

Jane is about to have a beautiful weekend in the mountains with her boyfriend – at least, that’s what she thinks. But instead of her boyfriend, three uninvited guests show up at her doorstep, and they’re not going away. It’s getting dark, a contest begins, and Jane happens to be the grand prize. There’s only one person who can help her.

Colorful characters of various ages, personalities, professions, and hobbies are all searching for happiness, though each in a different place and with a different outcome.

The story of Jarda Kuchař, a hero of the bygone era of Tuzex vouchers. His income comes from renting out his own apartment. Every summer, he is forced to spend his time at an abandoned pond, where he runs an even more abandoned snack bar. His right-hand man (and he is left-handed) is the local simpleton Kamil Hošpes. Among the handful of customers are two tractor drivers, Jirka and Péťa, and Jarda's sworn enemy, the fanatical fisherman Pepa Vrtílek with his dog Pepík. The capricious summer days are disrupted by an apparition of monstrous proportions. Lojza, a monster catfish, emerges from the depths of the third irrigation category and eats Vrtílek's dog. Jarda Kuchař sees Lojza as an opportunity to revive local tourism. He calls on fishermen from all over the country. And two actually arrive...

Irena Kopáčová, a relationship psychologist, hits rock bottom when her practice lease is terminated and she discovers her partner’s infidelity. After drunkenly visiting a soothsayer and wishing to be a man, she wakes up in a male body and must navigate life from an entirely new perspective, struggling to convince others of her true identity.

Čenda and Jana don't have it easy in life. They're both unemployed, Čenda is up to his ears in debt, and the most frequent visitor to their home is the debt collector. But that's about to change thanks to a lottery ticket blessed by a priest. A fairy-tale win of 176 million crowns opens the door to a world of unlimited possibilities for the couple. But it also brings a lot of new friends who would like to get a big piece of the prize.

Josef is a successful violin maker. He enjoys seeing the instruments he makes bring joy to people all over the world. He himself prefers to spend his time in his workshop in the courtyard of a tenement house. He has never been to the sea; his sea is a puddle in the courtyard, which he protects from drying out so that the birds have something to drink. He has no wife or children, only his dog Pampeliška, who accompanies him everywhere. Josef secretly loves his beautiful neighbor Anežka and looks forward to Wednesday chess games with his best friend Václav, a charismatic piano tuner.

On Klobouk Hill, which rises above the marshy forests, stands a bell tower, and there reigns Lady Fog, who rules the entire region unseen. No matter what the reformed bandit Jerka Berka claims, she is the true mistress here. And then there is the righteous Jan, who would never steal from anyone, not even the robber himself. And Jan has a lot of work to do. He must constantly rescue his brother Matouš, who has fallen in love with the robber's daughter Tereza, and he must also help the wild girl Anděla regain her true human form. Will Mrs. Mlha help him?

The last drop for Jan's resolution is the voluntary death of his father-in-law, whose strength and patience ran dry. Grandma made decisions about Grandpa's life, old age as well as the funeral. Jan is sure that he and his wife Olga are on the same route. He recalls his past life when he used to have his own will and dreams and he wants to live again with dignity and freedom. He longs to control his own life again. And his solution is escape from the present life. In this movie we watch, in parallel ,the fates of Jan's married daughters Olinka and Alenka and his sons-in-law Erik and Pepík.

Princes flock to the Noodle Kingdom to compete for Princess Beatrice's hand in marriage. However, Prince Vladimir is not particularly keen on getting married, so he swaps roles with his servant Janek, a renowned chef. He has no idea what trouble this swap will cause him – immediately upon arrival, he is asked to take charge of the kitchen. And so Vladimír must deal not only with an unusual task, but also with his unexpected growing affection for the princess, whose father has meanwhile chosen a completely different groom for her. Perhaps only a magic noodle of knowledge can resolve this tangled situation.

Dostoevsky’s latter-day opus about the siblings and their father is among the masterpieces of world literature. It asks profound questions about ethics and religion. Is there a God? Does the devil exist? Is everything allowed because we live in a world without morality? And if so, does patricide even constitute a crime? One of the most interesting adaptations of the material is The Karamazovs by Czech director Petr Zelenka. We witness a group of thesps from Prague on a trip to Krakow in Poland to stage the novel as a play in a derelict steelworks as part of the Closer to Life Festival. The project, however, is born under the bad sign, apparently doomed from the start. When they arrive, the roof is about to cave in, so that the actors are told to wear safety helmets. Their sole consistent audience is a laborer (Andrzej Mastalerz) who rather follows each dress rehearsal than watching over his seven-year-old son who has suffered a tragic accident in the factory.

In a small Czech town, mother dependent Robert, his attractive girlfriend Simona, histrionic Tomas and extremely reserved History freak Funes, all dissatisfied with their lives, are members of the same string Quartet. As they rehearse for their next concert, they will get into a circle of eccentric situations and misunderstandings.

Comedy inspired by paperback crime novels tells the story of an adventurous search for a mysterious murderer who just after the end of the First World War has begun a rampage in Wilson City, a jerkwater town somewhere in Eastern Europe. The investigation is being led by an inhomogeneous pair of detectives - a greenhorn and local police cadet named Eisner and an experienced FBI officer Food, who has been sent to Europe by US President Woodrow Wilson himself.

Urban, an orphan, serves a greedy master watchmaker as an apprentice. When Urban grows up, he falls in love with the watchmaker's daughter Laura and wants to marry her. Before this can happen, the master sends his apprentice out into the world with the task of looking for a mythical watch that can warn of death. No one knows if the watch even exists, but if Urban doesn't bring it back, Laura will never be his wife. The watchmaker's apprentice therefore sets out on a long journey full of hardships, which he must overcome with bravery, skill and a good heart.

It is often only a few hundred meters from the chemical laboratory to the nearest pharmacy. But on this journey, the drug molecule undergoes a process worth hundreds of millions of dollars, often involving thousands of people. That is, the molecule that is lucky enough to reach its destination. The play Elegance of the Molecule follows three such substances and their three "fathers," one of whom was the brilliant Czech chemist Professor Antonín Holý. It explores the creation and dramatic industrial development of substances from Czech chemical laboratories that today treat AIDS in more than sixty percent of patients worldwide. Otto Wichterle had his famous story about how he built a device for centrifuging the first contact lenses using a Merkur construction kit. Petr Zelenka's play looks for such a "Merkur" in the life of chemist Antonín Holý.

A twisted gay romance set in the 19th Century picturesque Bohemia telling a tabooed true story of birth of one of the nation's most influential writers, starring Julius Feldmeier. Suspense, laughter, violence, hope, heart, nudity, sex and a happy ending—mostly a happy ending.

One day in the life of a young taxi driver. Prague taxi driver Jarda wants to celebrate his birthday. He has everything nicely planned and under control, just like everything else in his professional and private life. He gets along with everyone, takes care of everything, and everyone is happy with him. Jarda simply "knows his way around." He has a wonderful wife, a beautiful apartment, a relaxed job, a new lover, and lots of good friends, but then a man gets into his new taxi, a man whom fate has also presented with a series of unexpected and complicated situations and fundamental decisions that day. And so, in their unexpected companionship and day-long journey, a number of relationships and values are transformed for both of them.

Detective Miller lives with his mother even though he is over forty. He has a serious girlfriend, but he tries to keep her as far away from his nosy mother as possible. He likes his peace and comfort. He tends to avoid problems rather than solve them. This is probably why he hides from everyone that he has kidney problems and that, on his doctor's orders, he has to carefully measure and record all his fluid intake and output over the coming weekend. This causes him no end of trouble, as everyone interprets his strange behavior differently - his mother, his girlfriend, and his colleague at work.

Through globalization, many countries have been opened and barriers removed to ensure easy trade, travel and cultural diversity. However, this openness has given opportunities to criminals looking to exploit the system and ultimately threaten our global safety. As Europe has become a "safe house" for criminals eluding law enforcers, a special kind of law enforcement team is needed to handle specific ongoing crimes on a global level. "Crossing Lines" is the story of one such team, made up of five international cops, headed by Captain Daniel. The team - comprised of individuals who have little in common - must learn to live and work under the most dangerous and potentially deadly conditions. Housed in an unused storage section underneath the ICC, this mismatched team faces bureaucratic, jurisdictional and cultural obstacles while traversing continents in pursuit of justice.

When Hana Sikorova, mayor of a northern Bohemian village, stands up to a large coal mining concern that offers villagers large compensation in exchange for abandoning their houses built on land containing brown coal deposits, her fourteen year old daughter Misha disappears. The search for her daughter makes Hana suspicious of the whole community, after years of peaceful coexistence. Under the pressure of unfolding events, the community starts to fall apart and show its true face. Solving the mystery divides the story into several interweaving narratives that ultimately connect in unexpected ways.

This time the detectives deal with the case of a murdered professor. One day a cleaning woman finds him shot to death in his own study. The detectives will thus investigate whether the murder is connected with the victim's persistent effort for the removal of the University's quaestor because of the latter's strange machinations during the reconstruction of the University building. And they'll also want to know why the murderer took the great risk involved in killing the victim on the university soil. The search for the answer to the question who could wish the death of the peculiar but honest professor will take them farther than they have expected.