Best Czech history movies

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.

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.

Pre-WWII Czech democratic politician Milada Horáková was one of the first victims of the communist regime in Czechoslovakia. Opposing the 1948 coup but not leaving the country, she was arrested and tried for treason on fabricated charges in a show trial broadcast on the radio.

Salzburg, Germany, 2000. The elderly Czech actress Lída Baarová tells a journalist the tumultuous story of her rise to fame in 1930s Berlin and her passionate relationship with the sinister Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda of the Third Reich.

Based on the true story of brothers Josef and Ctirad Mašín who, in 1953, tried to escape communist Czechoslovakia to join the US army in West Berlin.

Bittersweet comedy about four teenage boys, their friends, parents, lovers - from the moment when they are 15 to moment when they are 18. Story is set in 1970s, when is Czechoslovakia occupied by Russians.

In 1939, Czech diplomat Jan Masaryk flees to the United States to escape his recent past: Germany has invaded Czechoslovakia and he is now a man with no nation; because, as the Czechoslovak ambassador in London, he failed to win the support of the British and could not avert the fall of his country and the outbreak of the World War II.

Czechoslovakia, 1941. As the war continues, Reich Protector Reinhard Heydrich arrives in Nazi-occupied Prague and establishes a regime of terror that will force freedom fighters to act. But the price to pay will be too high.

This fascinating historical drama looks at the life of "the Czech Schindler," Zdenek Toman, a controversial figure who was an unsavory politician and dubious entrepreneur, but also the savior of hundreds of Eastern European Jews.

In 1913, Czech skiing champion Bohumil Hanč perseveres alone in a fierce snowstorm during a race, collapses from exhaustion and exposure, and is found by his friend Emerich Rath, who risks his own life in a desperate rescue attempt. Tragically, Hanč succumbs to the elements, and shortly after his friend Václav Vrbata, who lent Hanč his coat, also perishes in the blizzard.

As World War II rages on, Villi and Colette are captured and sent to Auschwitz concentration camp. Imprisoned within separate compounds, the lovers must risk their lives to be together again.

Slovakia, on the eve of the outbreak of World War II. The family of the young Jewish Martin Friedmann gathers to celebrate his bar mitzvah and make a solemn promise that they will all meet again a year later around the same table; but the storms of war and anti-Semitic fanaticism will lead each of them down very different paths.

It is the story of Jiri and Jan, two Czech soldiers, battling alongside the allied forces against the Germans, during World War II in Tobruk, Libya. Jiri Pospichal, eighteen years old, signs up as a volunteer in the Czechoslovak army. His naive ideas about heroism are rawly confronted with the hell of the African desert, complicated relationships in his unit and the ubiquitous threat of death.

Mid-19th-century, Baltic Sea port city of Lubeck, Germany. Follows the fourth generation of the Buddenbrook mercantile family as Tony and Thomas reach the age of marriage. Fatefully impeded every step of the way, the Buddenbrooks struggle as economic hardship and personal defeats weigh down family relations.

An immersion into the intimacy of Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the USSR. The architect of perestroika and glasnost, who was praised in the West but reviled in his own country, still combative despite his advanced age, loneliness and illness, offers his personal and political testament.

The beautiful and dangerous lesbian slave trader Druscilla practices all the customs of Ancient Rome - everything in Excess. But even excess can have its limits and the punishments can be very severe if she crosses the line and risks falling out of favor.

The year is 1764. For over a year, Josef has been leading a precarious life in Venice. He hopes to become an opera composer. The city, full of talented and already-established composers, seems closed to him. Looking for work as a violinist, he comes into the orbit of a rich young woman. Thanks to her, he gets the opportunity to play at salons. But his real opportunity arises when he becomes the lover of a libertine marquise. She teaches him worldly manners, rids him of signs of a provincial upbringing and introduces him to a hedonistic existence free from religious intolerance. Thus transformed, Josef gets an incan incredible commission: to write an opera for the San Carlo, Europe's largest theatre.

Told from the perspective of man reflecting on his childhood in Prague in the early years of World War II and the eventual destruction of his family as the Nazis rise to power. The storyline focuses heavily on Jewish-Czech Silberstein family members. Drama was filmed on the real events as a tribute to Mr. Nicholas Winton, the British humanitarian who organized the rescue of 669 children, most of them Jewish, from Czechoslovakia on the eve of the Second World War in an operation later known as the Czech Kindertransport from German-occupied Czechoslovakia and likely death in the Holocaust.

The film chronicles the events of a village on the Czech-Austrian border from the 1930s to 1950s, where genocide occurred due to fallout between German citizens and Czechs who collaborated with the Nazi regime during the war.

A powerful and thrilling story of a Czech flying ace, his friends, and their boundless love of flying. Four friends and their aviation mentor fly together and serve in the army for twenty years. But then, after a long time, the death of a former RAF pilot during an attempt to fly to the West begins to unravel, and the main character has no choice but to try to imitate him. "You are a trespasser, follow me," are the words he often reports into the radio when forcing those who are flying west in search of freedom to land. Now he too must attempt the same desperate escape.

After the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, Libuše Jarcovjáková, a young female photographer, strives to break free from the constraints of Czechoslovak normalization and embarks on a wild journey towards freedom, capturing her experiences on thousands of subjective photographs.

A 19 year old nonconformist poet living in 1947 Czechoslovakia is blind to the Communist behemoth looking over him, and instead lives a bohemian life with sexually liberated girls.

Life of Czech composer Smetana, his search for love and artistic inspiration despite hearing loss, and quest for his muse Eliska. Navigating personal and professional challenges and the founding of the National Theatre in Prague.

They returned home to Czechoslovakia, believing that the long-awaited peace would come. However, history decided otherwise. Over two and a half thousand pilots served in the uniforms of the British Royal Air Force. Heroes to the British, who helped decide the outcome of the war, they were tried for treason in our country after the war... The Ballad of a Pilot takes place in late summer 1945 and early 1946, a time of euphoria over the newly acquired peace, when the network of interpersonal relationships, shattered by the war, began to reform. At first, it was thought that the First Republic democracy would take over the government, but the fate of Czechoslovakia turned out differently.

A princess grows up without a mother. Her father, a kind and just king, loves his daughter above all else, but wants to marry her off at any cost. And no one really knows why he is in such a hurry. The king organizes a grand ball at the castle. A number of princes court the princess, but the one she chooses does not appeal to her father for reasons that are incomprehensible... Only later does it become clear that behind it all lies an ancient curse, the ruler of the empire of witches, and the Snow Dragon. The princess and her chosen one thus embark on a difficult and dangerous journey...

A drama that tells the story of the physician and politician MUDr. František Kriegel, the hero of the Prague Spring of 1968, who was arrested and kidnapped to Moscow on the night of August 21st together with five leaders of the party and the state (Dubček, Černík, Smrkovský, Špaček and Šimon). He was the only Czechoslovak politician who managed to stand up to Brezhnev in Moscow captivity, even under the threat of liquidation, and not to sign the Moscow Protovol which meant agreeing to the occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968.

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'.

Operation Danube was the cover name for the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact armies in August 1968. The fleet of Polish tanks which arrive to liberate their neighbor, ostensibly threatened by a counter-revolution, includes the old tank nicknamed Ladybird, which is the last to leave the barracks.

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.

During the so-called normalization period, Teplice, once a beautiful spa town nicknamed "Little Paris," is devastated, much like the entire northwestern industrial border region. It is often shrouded in dense smog, making visibility limited to just a few meters. Teplice is also a stronghold of a specific punk subculture and a city of exceptional alternative culture. The story of Pavel and Renata primarily unfolds in Teplice. They aspire to live freely, in accordance with their ideals. However, their lives are consistently disrupted by the repressive communist regime.

A gripping documentary about the courage and determination of a young English stockbroker who saved the lives of 669 children. Between March 13 and August 2, 1939, Nicholas Winton organized 8 transports to take children from Prague to new homes in Great Britain, and kept quiet about it until his wife discovered a scrapbook documenting his unique mission in 1988. Winton was a successful 29-year-old stockbroker in London who "had an intuition" about the fate of the Jews when he visited Prague in 1939. He quietly but decisively got down to the business of saving lives. We learn how only two countries, Sweden and Britain, answered his call to harbor the young refugees; how documents had to be forged and how once foster parents signed for the children on delivery, that was the last he saw of them.

Czech painter an illustrator Alphonse Mucha (1860-1939) ranks among the pioneers of the Art Nouveau movement at the end of the 19th century. Virtually overnight, he becomes famous in Paris thanks to the posters that he designs to announce actress Sarah Bernhardt's plays. But at the height of his fame, Mucha decides to leave Paris to realize his lifetime project.

After World War II, fighter pilot Antonín Maděra returns from England to his native village in the Ore Mountains to forget the hardships and horrors of war and to "live, work, and love his neighbors," as he himself says. But Svatý Štěpán, which his family had to leave in 1939, is no longer the same place it used to be. However, even in his wildest dreams, he could not have imagined what really awaited him there.

On 26 September 1928, Karel Capek and President T.G. Masaryk meet in the gardens of Topolcianky castle to decide about the fate of their joint literary work. Their fiction film dialogue is based on quotes from a future book and their mutual correspondence, considerably freeing the original format of literary conversation from binding conventions. Capek and Masaryk reproach and offend each other, but they also ask key personal questions and questions about the social functions of a writer and politician respectively. "It's a film about two extraordinary men; it's about the fact that emotions can be sometimes more powerful than ideas even in such exceptional people.

The war is coming to an end, and while some German officers fight with fanatical conviction until the very end, others begin to think about life after the war. The wealth that the Nazis hid in various places during the war attracts not only the Germans themselves, but also the secret services of the Allies. Their agents and feared commandos attempt to overcome the fierce fighting on the front lines and infiltrate the German army and the dreaded Gestapo.

When the Nazi army occupied Bohemia and Moravia on March 15, 1939, the Czech nation faced a period of mortal danger. A few weeks later, Major General Alois Eliáš entered the most dramatic period of his life – on April 27, 1939, he was appointed Prime Minister of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. This was despite the fact that the Nazis were aware of Eliáš's activities in the Russian and then French Czechoslovak legions, and that he was an advocate of active defense at the time of the Munich capitulation. Alois Eliáš accepted the position in the Protectorate government with full awareness of the risks and dangers: he was aware that by cooperating with the Nazis he would tarnish his name, and he knew that he could not do without feigned loyalty.

The Defenestration of Prague, which took place on May 23, 1618, was the decisive historical moment that unleashed the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) between several Catholic and Protestant states and changed the course of European history forever. (Additionally released as a heavely edited historical documentary entitled The Defenestration of Prague, 85 min.)

The story, written by former George Stransky former political prisoners and today's chairman Pen Club is situated to 50 years and uranium camp of political prisoners in Pribram, where after the fall of the Stalinist cult comes at the end of 1958 as a prisoner of the former Chief of Main Administration of correctional facilities Colonel Good. Former chief topic of coexistence, "a guard" and political prisoners in the Bolshevik camp served timeless makers to reflect on the possibility (or impossibility) of forgiveness and a sense of justice. The film, unfortunately, below expectations - mainly because of its rarity and lack syžetovou arching dramatic arc of the story, including natural gradation. Nice camera and vice versa are cast, formed literally myriad of top Czech actors. A representative of one of the main roles - Jiri Schmitzer in 1997 was awarded the Czech Lion.

An exciting drama from a detective history. In 1899 a dead girl - seamstress Anežka Hrůzová - was found between the village of Věžnička and the town of Polná. She was 19 and she had a cutting wound on the throat. There was no sexual violence involved and since the local doctors thought that there was not enough blood on the crime scene, everyone jumped to the conclusion that Jews must have killed her and added her blood to their passover matzot. There was a potential murderer at hand too - a cheeky, not very bright young Jewish rover, Leopold Hilsner…

A story inspired by the largest single rescue mission of downed Allied airmen behind enemy lines in aviation history of all time, codenamed “The Halyard Mission”. This action took place in the summer of 1944. It was led by the Yugoslav Army in the Fatherland that was headed by General Dragoljub “Draža” Mihailović. It was at great cost and sacrifice that the Serbian people saved 508 American and other Allied countries’ airmen from certain death, sending them off to safety from the improvised airfield in the Serbian village of Pranjani, at the foot of Mt Suvobor.

Three chords, three countries, one revolution...PUNK IN AFRICA is the story of the multiracial punk movement within the recent political and social upheavals experienced in three Southern African countries: South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe.

Czech Television's epic historical film draws on the breathtaking dramatic life of the great of Czech history, King Charles IV.

Based on true events. USSR, 1950s. As the reach of the oppressive communist regime escalates,

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.

During WWII two sisters have stolen some emeralds from the lesbian Nazi SS officer (Rena Riffel) and now are on the run. One gets captured by her and gets tortured with electrified Freddy Krueger glove into revealing the location of the gems. The other escapes to her cousin's house, but her cousin who isn't that pleased with her appearance and blackmails the girl into becoming her personal slave in return for not turning her over to the SS.

The documentary First of May explores the more than a century-long evolution of the celebration and the meaning of this day. The structure is composed of memories, newspaper excerpts, testimonies found in archives, etc. - all these passages are brought to life by the actors' voices, taking on the roles of journalists, factory workers, policemen, workers and ordinary people who watch May Day, sometimes with interest and verve, sometimes with distance or irony.

When their father is falsely accused of witchcraft and departs to clear his name, five resourceful siblings must band together to stop their scheming neighbor’s bid to seize their family’s fortress.

The documentary film uncovers the story of Mašín brothers, which is of the greatest stories of the Cold War. A group of five young men decided to leave the then-communist Czechoslovakia with guns in hand to join the fighting in the then expected war between the West and the East. The year was 1953, and today, through the last witnesses, we follow the 30-day dramatic journey to West Berlin and the subsequent fateful events that happened to her loved ones at home.

In 13th-century Bohemia, King Přemysl Otakar II sends his Bezděz castle steward Oldřich of Chlum north to broker a peace-marriage between the feuding Dubé and Vartemberk houses, only for him and his men to stumble on a murdered merchant’s trail. At the celebratory feast meant to seal the alliance, the Vartemberk castellan is killed and suspicion falls on a humble lutenist whose fiancée the victim had tried to violate, plunging Oldřich into a dangerous game of courtly intrigue.

What if the events in a key era in our history were actually completely different than what our history textbooks try to tell us? What if Master Jan Hus didn't even get warm in Constance, let alone burn up? What if Jan Zizka had more than one healthy eye? This animated comedy from director Pavel Koutský playfully breaks the myths about the Hussite era as the pedestal of history is occupied not by preachers and military leaders but by two unbelievable scatterbrains, who become the heroes of their time against their will.

The series follows Cyril and Methodius, two Byzantine Greek brothers born in the 9th century. They became missionaries of Christianity and influenced the cultural development of the Great Moravian territory.

Gottland provides an unconventional look at Czechoslovak 20th century history. Inspired by the bestselling book “Gottland” from the Polish journalist Mariusz Szczygiel, this feature-length film is comprised of short stories portraying peculiar fates. Young documentary film makers from renowned Prague Film School FAMU, inspired by the book, take a closer look at the history of post-war Czechoslovakia and Czech Republic, in order to discover new heroes and remind us of the ones that were forgotten or erased from the history.

The life story of Blessed Zdislava of Lemberk, about whom legends rather than sparse historical references tell us that she was a deeply religious woman with healing powers who devoted herself entirely to the humble service of her sick and suffering neighbors.

Druscilla and Baudica continue to take great risks for what they hope will be great rewards in their slave trading business. Choosing the daughter of a German noble family proves to have disastrous consequences as they engage in satisfying their lesbian desires with the ultimate but dangerous game of submission, training women and teens to become their docile submissive dolls to their erotic fantasies and sexual demands.