Martin, a poor student, volunteers to go on a quest to find a cure for the princess Adriana, who is stricken with a strange illness. Unknown to Martin or anyone else, the princess is actually under the spell of the powerful magician Andlobrandini, who is preparing a rejuvenating elixir made from...
In this zany Czechoslovakian comedy, a scientist invents a machine that projects a sleeping person's dream on a screen; disaster soon follows when the machine malfunctions and the cartoon-like dream characters become very real!
At the beginning was the Slovak television series Lekár umierajúceho czasu (Doctor of Dying Time), dedicated to the Rudolphine-era scientist Jan Jesenius. He ended up on the scaffold along with other gentlemen after losing the anti-Habsburg uprising. When director Miloslav Luther conceived the...
The movie is a satirical look at foreign occupation - a medieval Czech jester entertains a German king and his French wife, or a modern Czech villager helps a Bavarian hunter and his French wife find wild boar in Bohemia - the story switches back and forth between the two plots and time-periods.
In 1866 the Prussians withdraw from the German alliance and declare war on Austria. A sergeant of this army forces a Czech young man named Ludvík Machl to execute himself by hanging. However, the unfortunate man's road to death had already begun earlier. Ludvík was one of the patriotic...
This futuristic science fiction comedy features an atomic bomb blast that causes women to grow beards and lose the ability to have children. A summit meeting is held at the United Nations, with the proposed solution of building a time machine. The decision is made to travel back in time and murder...
The film follows Karel Novák, who is appointed as the head of a research institute's new department. His ambitious wife, Eva, sees this as an opportunity for social advancement. She quits her job, turns their apartment into a hair salon, and begins networking with influential people. However, her...
An old man is wandering round a badly signposted and as yet mostly under construction Prague housing estate looking for the high rise block into which he is supposed to be moving with his daughter's family. The old granddad from the countryside likes chatting, nothing escapes his eyes and he wants...
The little mermaid rescues a prince from drowning and falls in love with him. To be with him, she makes a deal with the evil sorceress: her beautiful voice against a life on land. It seems to work at first, the prince is enchanted with her lovely appearance. But the memory of a foreign princess...
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...
Dana Martinová, a young woman of loose morals, dies at the hands of a mentally unstable young man, Pavel Zach. In a fit of jealousy, he could not restrain himself and killed the girl with a blow to the head. The police find the corpse thanks to Dana's friend Eva Simonova. And it's Eva who becomes...
Czechoslovakian Zbynek Brynych directs this psychological drama set in World War II Terezin ghetto. A dark, visual portrayal of the trials and tribulations the Theresienstadt people faced on a daily basis presented in a series of memorable stories. Their hopes and dreams unfold against the...
In a chateau near Prague there is a chantry and brothel Riviera, designed for the clientele from the higher circles. Mrs. Gábi Stolařová, called Madame, keeps a close eye on order, but otherwise she runs the place in a family spirit and makes sure that the customers are satisfied. A new...
In this fairy-tale comedy, a clumsy second-rate wizard, Rumburak, gets stuck in the world of humans. He has forgotten the spell that allows him to return to his home fairyland. His only joy is watching the figure skater Helen, whom he would like to woo. His hopes of returning to fairyland dawn when...
It’s a hot holiday season in the city and Alena is pretty much left to her own little self, fantasizing and running her personal daily rituals, keeping most people at a safe distance, yet trying to get male attention.
The sore and tender hearts of a young couple with a toddler are explored in this drama. The little girl, four years old, is not aware that she is doing anything distressing while she ambles about the house on the day after a post-examination celebration by her father, a university student. Even...