Jiří Menzel

Jiří Menzel (1938-2020) was a Czech filmmaker, theatre director, actor, and screenwriter, and one of the formative figures of the Czech New Wave. Menzel’s humanist approach to the lives of ordinary Czechs and his relationship with writers such as Bohumil Hrabal and Vladislav Vančur helped to establish the tone of the New Wave in the 1960s. Born in Prague, Menzel studied at the city’s famous FAMU film academy after the war. His debut feature, Closely Observed Trains (1966), adapted from a novel by Hrabal, was an international hit and won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1968. Menzel was one of the few New Wave mainstays to remain in the country following the crushing of the Prague Spring in 1968 – even after his 1969 feature Larks on a String, also from a story by Hrabal, was banned. Menzel worked consistently within the state studio system throughout the seventies and eighties, and when Larks on a String was finally released in 1990 following the Velvet Revolution, it won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival.