Bohumil Šmída

In Vražda v hotelu Excelsior, the interwar period homicide detective squad from Prague investigates the murder of a wealthy woman, Mrs Matoušová, which threatens the reputation of the eponymous luxury hotel popular with Prague’s elite. Even the retired police inspector Mrázek (František Filipovský), who works at the Excelsior as a hotel detective, is unable to help at first. Although the investigation inevitably uncovers the hotel staff’s scheming, Vacátko and his team unerringly follow the trail that leads them to the murderer…

The year is 1943. The war is raging between the Germans and the Allies in North Africa. A truck with a Czech crew, Lieutenant Navara and six soldiers, escapes from the Foreign Legion fortress. Their aim is to reach the Allies and fight against Nazism. The truck is destroyed by a German army plane, which is hit by enemy fire in its turn. One Czech soldier dies in the attack, the driver is badly wounded, and Navara has serious burns on his face. The group has very little water and must reach an oasis that is 60 km away.

Two teenage girls embark on a series of destructive pranks in which they consume and destroy the world around them.

Middle-aged Antonin and his friends, the major, now retired, and the canon, are in the river, swimming and philosophizing. Then it starts to rain. It just seems to be that sort of summer. Antonin runs the swimming bath with his portly wife Katherine... A man appears with his horse-drawn caravan. He lays a striped pole across the river and walks over. With a handstand and a magic trick, Ernie the Conjuror invites everyone to that evening's performance... Ernie is a tightrope walker of only modest skill, but with a slim and beautiful assistant, Anna. Antonin speaks to her. The two spend the night in the change room by the river, Antonin massaging her feet all night long. Katherine decides to move into the caravan with Ernie. But now the major and even the canon sense Anna's attractiveness...

A military base. An awkward soldier. A statue of Bach. And suddenly all guns in the area change into music instruments. Great mystery is immediately found by TV station. And soon the military base becomes a stage for huge TV show.

At a village railway station in occupied Czechoslovakia, a bumbling dispatcher’s apprentice longs to liberate himself from his virginity. Oblivious to the war and the resistance that surrounds him, this young man embarks on a journey of sexual awakening and self-discovery, encountering a universe of frustration, eroticism, and adventure within his sleepy backwater depot.

After the Battle of Lipany, the remnants of the Hussite troops concentrated under the leadership of Jan Roháč of Dubé at Sion Castle. However, he had no prospects of victory against the soldiers of the Lordship. Sion was conquered, Roháč of Dubé was captured and executed as a pest in Prague on September 9, 1437.

Prague, during World War II. Hana Kaufmann, a Jewish ophthalmologist, marries Dr. Antonín Bureš, a Christian man. When her family is sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp, their romance turns into a struggle for survival.

The military airfield crew are not allowed to leave the area because alert level two has been declared. All walks have been cancelled and Private Standa Urban is looking forward to meeting his girlfriend who has come to visit him. His friends from the infirmary are sympathetic and conspiratorially organise the whole event...

An escort composed of three people transports a huge amount of new one-hundred crown banknotes in a special railway car. At the 196th kilometer, a village girl is waiting at the railway crossing and spots two men removing some packages from the track. The scene is immediately followed by the report of a gun and the unwanted witness is shot dead. Soon afterwards, on the 201st kilometer, the train explodes. Only one of the escorts Lenk (Radoslav Brzobohatý) survives the explosion, taken to hospital with serious injuries. Criminologist Major Kalas (Jirí Sovák) and the very young Second Lieutenant Karlícek (Jaromír Hanzlík) patiently gather facts, leads and testimonies.

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.

While old Oliva tells a group of children about his life as a sailor and how he met Diana and her cat with sunglasses, a strange circus arrives in town.

The lives of 7 friends in a small Czech town from 1945 to some time after 1958.

An historical depiction of the events preceding the political murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, would-be emperor of the Austro-Hungarian throne, in Sarajevo on June 28th, 1914.

A lyrical story about first love, death and disappointment, based on a poem of the same title.

The actress, who is starring in a successful theatre production, is offered a big film role by an Italian director. She decides to leave her current certainties behind and throw herself into the whirlwind of a tempting opportunity, only she doesn't count on the fact that not every expectation will actually come true as she had ideally hoped...

A quintet of vignettes based on short stories by Bohumil Hrabal: an eventful trip to the motorcycle races results in drunkenness, long-winded discussions, and death; two elderly men create false biographies; insurance agents visit an eccentric painter/goat farmer and his mother; guests at a wedding reception remain oblivious to outlying misery; and a working-class boy romances a Roma girl.

A dark fable set in an early 1950s Czech village, a time of Soviet-style socialism which saw the implementation of collectivized agriculture and the mass closure of monasteries and convents.

In her first feature, Věra Chytilová uses a combination of documentary and fiction film techniques to tell two stories in counterpoint. The first follows Olympic champion gymnast Eva Bosáková, who contemplates retirement as she undergoes a gruelling training schedule; the second, a housewife who is unappreciated and ignored by her husband.

Concert master Karel Mašek is a drunk, as well as engineer Danda and other regular guests of the pub U Kroců. Mašek returns from the pub in the morning and promises the woman that he will stop drinking. But he failed again, and the orchestra players refuse to play with him. Danda returns home without a bag and goes to Krocs again in the morning, even though he has an important job at work. He has been degraded to subordinate job position, but he refused to admit it at home.

Story about the people around the circus and the unfortunate love of a young man an acrobat. Before the dispute escalates so much that, according to the old clown, Vincek ends up with a noose on his back and Lotyš in a bass, fate intervenes and the young acrobat is called up to the war, where he serves with the dragoons. After serving his time and being released into civilian life, he sets out to find the National with his beloved Nina. However, she has not been with the circus for almost a whole year. Her parents took her away and Vincek, to the chagrin of his friends and the principal, decides to go looking for her. After a long journey, he finds his beloved in the Russian Kuznecki circus, but she has changed a lot during the years of separation. A simple girl in love has turned into a calculating, ambitious woman who desires money above all. But Vincek doesn't have you.

A dark comedy about a murder and its consequences presented in a backwards manner, where death is actually a rebirth. The film starts with an "execution" of the main protagonist and goes back to explore his previous actions and motivations.

In the morning twilight of Prague, the dead body of the safe-breaker Toufar is found floating on the river Vltava with a knife in his back. Police inspectors visit Toufar's lover, the prostitute Anna Kulatá (Jirina Bohdalová), nicknamed Umbrella, and it is apparent that the moment before she opened the door of her flat, someone fled through the window. Umbrella is summoned for examination to the head of the criminal police - Police Councilman Vacátko Jaroslav Marvan, but although shocked by the photograph of the dead man, she does not confess to anything. Before Toufar, Umbrella lived with the safe-breaker Penicka (Radoslav Brzobohatý), who loved her very much and made her quit her street trade. But when he was sentenced to three years' imprisonment, Umbrella began to live with the brute Toufar, who chased her to street again. In the case of the murder, Penicka is therefore the prime suspect.

Thirty Cases of Major Zeman is a Czechoslovak action-drama television show intended as a political propaganda to support the official attitude of the communist party. The series were filmed in the 1970s. Each episode encompasses one year, and investigations are stylized to that year. Most are inspired by real cases. The series follows the life of police investigator Jan Zeman during his career from 1945 to 1975.

Pan Tau always had a gentle expression and a friendly smile, he was elegantly dressed in a stroller, with an umbrella and a white carnation in the lapel. Foremost, he was famous for his magic bowler hat. By tapping on his hat, Pan Tau was able to change his appearance into a puppet, to conjure up miscellaneous objects or to do other magic. His most characteristically behavior is that he would help children who were experiencing some sort of difficulties in-between their dreams and reality, like finding a place for skiing, settling family problems on Christmas, and even give a boy a good time at a fair when he is supposed to have piano lessons. To adults, he usually remained invisible.