Jan Novotný

A 50-year-old foreign trade executive meets a 20-year-old student at a trade fair in Brno. The relationship triggers confrontational memories of his own youth and ideals...

The film about curious children who discover a sunken statue of Masaryk in a disused well was interfered with by the events of November and the filmmakers tried to incorporate their echoes into the flow of the narrative. However, the result is at times confusing, as the originally childish adventure has thus grown into a naive social poster child.

Captain Exner solves another detective mystery - this time while he's on vacation. The most elegant of Czech crime novelists has chosen a quiet town called Opolná as his place of well-deserved rest. But just as he arrives, the local shoemaker Rambousek, a famous (and wealthy) naive painter, is murdered.

The aging Bohus buries his wife Vlastička and after seven years of abstinence starts drinking again.

New recording of the most succesful play of Prague's National Theater starring Miroslav Donutil. Goldoni's comedy "Servant of Two Masters" is typical example of classical "commedie dell'arte". Beatrice arrives in Venice dressed as her brother who was killed by her lover Florindo. Florindo also escapes from Tourine. Beatrice hires Truffaldino, a servant who also lets himself be hired by another master to get twice as much money and food. The second master is indeed Florindo, who coincidentally accomodates in the same hostel as Beatrice...

A film about the lives of three people. Marek lives out in the mountains with his father who is a person with a certain disability. Apart from his father Marek never interacts with any other people. The pair survive by poaching animals. Marek’s father trades the animals they poach in the nearest village for the things they need to survive in the wilderness. Marek is in hiding is because there is a war going on and he does not want to be recruited to the army. Marek wants to avoid this fate as there is no one else to take care of his father, who wouldn't survive on his own. The solitude of the pair is broken when one day when an unexpected catch awaits Marek in one of his traps...

Blackjack isn’t a difficult game so everyone thinks they can play it. My father was a typical example. He thought luck would come his way but he lost everything instead. And I need that money. I want to be something he never was. I can’t think of anything else but humiliating him. He had fifteen years to change There’s no other way.

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).

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.

This fairy tale, based on a story by Oscar Wilde, begins on a stormy night when a woodcutter named Gordon finds a newborn baby in the forest. He names him Orion—child of the stars—and takes him home. Orion (played as an adult by J. Laštovka) grows up to be a very handsome boy, but unfortunately also conceited and cruel. One day, a beggar woman appears at the woodcutter's house and recognizes Orion as her lost son. Orion, who believes he is the child of a star, insults her badly and drives her away. Immediately, his face changes into a ridiculous and ugly one. After ten years of wandering, during which he learns many things, Orion falls into the power of an evil wizard who has a task for him. Completing this task will help the wizard rule the whole world. Orion must overcome evil spells and regain not only his beautiful face and pure soul, but also the love of his mother, whom he once proudly drove away.

Young painter Adam longs to paint a masterpiece, so he sets off into the world to gain experience. He hopes that Princess Almína, whose beauty he has heard about, could be the subject of his painting. However, after Almina's father dies, a devious prime minister seizes power over the kingdom and intends to consolidate his position by marrying the rightful heir to the throne. But Princess Almina is not interested in such a groom; she has fallen in love with the kind-hearted Adam. The self-proclaimed king is not happy about this at all...

Bio-pic about Czech composer Antonin Dvoraák at the height of his career. Dvorák learns that his love and lifelong muse is ill and must return to her side.

Deep underneath the sea surface, accompanied by a fish orchestra, the voice of the ocean is telling a story of Little -- the Sea King's daughter. They left the plundered waters of their home to live among humans. They now lead a strenuous life in a somber fish shop in the heart of the harbor district where one day, Little comes to meet a handsome, confident and somewhat fresh young man -- H.H. From this moment on, the life of Little is to take a sea change.

The two were brought together by chance. Ten-year-old Saša ran away from home when he was suspected of setting fire to a barn with his friends. Seventeen-year-old Ruda escaped from a juvenile detention center because he attacked a guard. They met in Sasha's grandfather's garden shed, and their paths would soon have diverged if Sasha hadn't discovered that it was Ruda who had set fire to the barn and decided to force him to confess to the police so that he and his friends would not be punished. But Ruda has no interest in confessing. He wants to get away. Away from this country, far from his life in children's homes and juvenile detention centers. And to prevent Saša from ruining his plan, he takes him as a kind of "hostage"...

A trio of rock-and-roll musicians arrives in the south of France for a sun-drenched summer of debauched fun and romance in this breezy comedy.

Olga is a complex young woman desperate to break free from her unfeeling family and social conventions. With her Louise Brooks-like tomboyish looks she drags herself, chain-smoking, from one job to another until she appears to find her niche as a truck driver. Although she has female lovers she does not form a bond with any of them; instead she clashes, time and again, venting herself in wordless emotional outbursts and other behavioural extremes.

A recording of the production from the courtyard of the Supreme Purkrab of Prague Castle starring Jan Tříská. Shakespeare's tragedy King Lear is a timeless tale of love, hate, betrayal, greed and lust for power. At the end of his life, the King decides to divide the kingdom between his three daughters based on their speeches about how much they love him. In his blindness, he disinherits and exiles the most honest and beloved Cordelia. He hands over all his power to his other two daughters and only in time does he discover what he has done and gradually slips into madness.

Teenager Kristina Kleinburger, daughter of the commander of a concentration camp, arrives from bombed-out Berlin to visit her parents, whose life represents a world of harmony and peace for her. Her parents try to reinforce her illusions with ballet lessons, which are to be given by a former Hungarian prima ballerina. In a single day, contrary to the intentions and plans of her father, a typical German officer, Kristina's ideas and illusions about her parents' society and the security of home collapse, and the whole perversity and monstrosity of the German war and totalitarian mechanism emerges before her with tragic inexorability and the echo of the approaching end of the war. The story, setting, and characters of the film are fictional, only the tragedy of their fates is real.

Horace was a guest at the home of his old friend Zdeněk, who lived in a secluded house on the shore of a lake with his current wife and his ex-wife. During his visit, Horace witnesses two strange deaths. However, not wanting to get involved in any more cases, he leaves the beautiful place without forming a clear opinion about the events. Two years later, however, circumstances cause him to doubt whether he did the right thing, so he goes to see Vašátko to get some clarity on the case. They both come to the conclusion that a murder took place in Zdeněk's home and also identify the perpetrator. All that remains is to convict him...

In a Czech school friendship grows between a teacher and a student. The friendship turns into an intimate relationship. Till the student begin to blackmail the teacher.

The Servant of Two Masters is a mature example of commedia dell'arte, featuring traditional characters and situations. It takes place within a close-knit family, where the main event is an engagement complicated by the servant Truffaldino, who is both cunning and foolish. He sets in motion a comedy of mistaken identities and misunderstandings, driven by his eternal hunger, through unexpected twists and turns to a happy ending. He is surrounded by traditional characters – commedia dell'arte masks – the worried father Pantalone, the wise doctor, and their children in love, an adventurous couple of lovers, the innkeeper Brighella, and the maid Smeraldina. Truffaldina is played by Miroslav Donutil, who continues the tradition of improvisation to the great delight of many audience members.

After a girl gets raped, the only possibility for getting her life back to normal is a memory wipe. But when they meet again, only one of them still remembers the past...

The story of fifteen-year-old Renata, who lives in a small apartment with her divorced parents, takes place during the socialist era of the 1980s. Not only does she have her own problems appropriate for her age, but she is also disgusted by her parents' constant arguments, who willingly involve her in all their intimate matters. She takes revenge on them by getting into more and more trouble. She gets drunk, listens to Radio Free Europe, and rebels somewhat clumsily against the political situation. But when things get really bad, she allows herself to be rescued by her father, a member of the secret police, with a mixture of admiration and contempt. Weaned on this confused world of adults, she clumsily stands on her own two feet. Only when she falls in love with a boy she doesn't want at a dance and loses her virginity to a boy she doesn't really know, only after various emotional escapades, does she find a certain indulgence for her eternally quarreling parents...

The story is based on Operation Stone, during which State Security agents deliberately misled citizens of the Czechoslovak Republic who were attempting to leave the country illegally by creating fake borders and fake border patrols and interrogation teams from American, German, and French authorities. During interrogations, State Security officers convinced detainees that they had actually crossed the state border of our republic and obtained information from unsuspecting people, which was then used in criminal proceedings.

In 1951, the well-known Czech actress Jiřina Štěpničková receives a letter from Austria from director František Čáp, who has recently emigrated. He invites her to the West and promises her roles in theater and film. She decides to seize the opportunity and flee. Together with a small group of people and her young son Jirka, she entrusts herself to a smuggler and embarks on a risky journey across the border. But something goes wrong. They are caught. Everything had been planned in advance. The smuggler himself is a member of the StB. But that's only the beginning.

Petr Soukup, a student from Karlovy Vary, is tasked with getting support for student protests in the spa city. However, Petr’s attention is rather absorbed in his relationships with students Zuzana and Martina as well as by the plight of a friend – single mother Jiřina who is making ends meet through sex work.

When misfortune befalls the prince and the fairy, what will happen to their love? What will happen if misfortune befalls us...? But what exactly is luck and what is misfortune? Who knows? Prince Lukáš is convinced that luck is beauty. The beauty of images, the beauty of words, the beauty of a face. So it's no surprise that when he catches sight of the lovely fairy Oxana, the most beautiful creature in the forest, he falls in love. He falls in love with her beauty. But how will the young prince react when, later on, Oxana sacrifices her beauty for him...?

Young knight Cyprian of Višně is long overdue for marriage, yet he refuses to even consider it. However, his cook Kunhuta cares deeply about his future, so she invites one bride after another to the castle. But Cyprian is friends with the castle ghosts—the headless knight, mischievous Cecilka, and the White Lady—and they willingly help him get rid of all the marriage-minded women. One day, their haunting scares Veronika, Kunhuta's niece, to death, but Cyprian suddenly becomes angry...

An elderly woman's quiet morning turns into the toughest day of her life with an unexpected visit from her son. He informs her that he is the unknown murderer the police has been searching for.

One phone call shakes Petra's life from the ground up. Her husband's fatal collapse causes Petra to become a widow from day to day. As she soon finds out, sadness and loneliness are not the only challenges she has to face.

A television adaptation of Jan Neruda's short stories The Bachelor and Mr. Carpet's Marriage.

At the end of the 1960s, when the air is filled with rock-and-roll and student rebellions are changing the world, the older of two brothers joins a prestigious newsroom of the public radio broadcaster. Not long after, he finds himself in the middle of a dangerous conflict between journalists and the secret service.

Young married couple Hana and Dan form a chamber duo. They are young and have their whole lives ahead of them. She sings and he accompanies her on the piano. Hana wins a prestigious competition and immediately attracts interest, or rather, interest in both of them. The agency sends them to concerts all over the country. Some places are great, others terrible. But above all, they have to travel quickly before they are pushed out by winners of other competitions. And Dan and Hana travel and play and are happy. And then one night, on the way back, it all ends. A moment of inattention, a drunk man stumbles along a forest road. Hana stops, Dan finds out that the man is alive, everything is fine. Or is it?

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.

Little Péťa visits his grandfather in the Krkonoše Mountains, where a swarm of bees settles on a tree. When Péťa disturbs it, the entire swarm attacks him, leaving him in a deep coma. Ordinary treatments fail, so Dr. Vrba insists on a beekeeper’s blood transfusion. Grandpa’s blood type doesn’t match, prompting a frantic search—ambulances, authorities, even foreign donors—to find a suitable beekeeper. After multiple transfusions from various volunteers, Péťa shows signs of recovery. With dawn breaking, hope returns as he awakens.

The year is 1936, the nervous atmosphere of the Nazi threat penetrates into the sport. Upgrade boxe Vilda Jakub will compete with German Kurt Schaller. The Nazis decisions are used in order to win his master even the dirtiest means. Vilda inspect their game and focus on the preparation of environmental events. The story culminates in the victory of one of the two lovers, between which Vilda tense moments in the decision.

Three short stories about the people and folk around the shaft.

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.

Jan Balej's animated film One Night in One City (2007) from the Czech Republic. Very little dialogue throughout, but instead a rich world of sounds and music which more than match the detailed animation and curious vignettes that create the film.

Set in 1776, this historical film by Petr Hvizd concerns an army deserter who takes refuge within the walls of the Convent of St. Claire. The investigation to find him soon becomes a question of morality concerning the value of human life in the context of the diversity and hierarchy of social laws.