Zdeněk Podhůrský

Bathory is based on the legends surrounding the life and deeds of Countess Elizabeth Bathory known as the greatest murderess in the history of mankind. Contrary to popular belief, Elizabeth Bathory was a modern Renaissance woman who ultimately fell victim to men’s aspirations for power and wealth.

Rumbling is a dramatic feature film based on a true contemporary story, spiced with real-life events taken from media reports mixed in. It showcases tales of domestic violence, acts of self-defense, standing up for what is right and helping victims in need. The film is about an endangered human archetype, one whose sense of justice and freedom of speech borders the edge of law and social norms. It was originally planned as a documentary about people whose nature defies societal norm. This background gives the film a credible amount of crude realism. As a feature film Rumbling is set in the world of motorcycles, rock music and artists, where people valuing fairness and honesty blend in their inherent explosive emotions, rumbling in the heart and love for absolute beauty. A world where man ceases to be judgmental with himself.

Based on the only extensive prose work by the surrealist painter Josef Capek, Shades of Fern most resembles the philosophical fairy tales and fables of Josef’s older brother, the legendary Czech novelist and playwright Karel Capek. Two young poachers, more boys than men, kill a gamekeeper when they are caught illegally hunting. Panicked, they retreat into a forest that grows steadily more forbidding and deadly as their fear for the future—and guilt over their action—mounts. Loosely based on hundreds of oral folk tales and legends that haunt the woods of Czechoslovakia, Vlácil’s contemporary updating artistically underscores the relationship between man and nature, crime and punishment, isolation and society, and guilt and memory.

Life of Czechoslovak soldiers in a military unit for the so called "politically unreliable" - the Technical auxiliary battalions, aka "the black barons". Although it might seem like a political satire and it's mostly funny, it shows the reality and the absurdity of military service under the communist regime. Based on a novel by Miloslav Svandrlik.

Petr and Lída Kadlec are moving to a dilapidated mill in the Bohemian Forest, which they plan to convert into a restaurant. Unsuspected obstacles from the locals get in the way of their dreams and ideas.

Fairy tale about young cobbler Jíra, who had fashioned wings from leather in order to rescue princess Jasnenka from the tower of the royal castle, where her father had closed her to to save her from the evil witch and her daughter Cernava.

Matěj Hůrka, a teenage bricklayer's apprentice, a young man who is delicate in matters of love, lives with his grandmother in a country cottage. He struggles with love problems, but waits in vain for some advice as his vivacious grandmother remarries an equally vivacious pensioner. The enterprising eldest generation thus contrasts to some extent with the youth, which is embarrassed.

Even under socialism, which proclaimed the equality of all people, there were status differences. A young bricklayer, who has fallen in love with a college girl from a "better" family, feels this first-hand - the girl's petty bourgeois parents are fundamentally opposed to an unequal relationship from their point of view. In protest, the young lovers decide to live in a tent for the time being and go straight to the park. The surprisingly clueless director Ladislav Rychman has tried to merge disco songs with a tame satire on modern-day rich people.

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 efforts entangle Karel in a web of shady business dealings, including a dubious connection with a foreign company, Djungarden. As misunderstandings and comedic mishaps unfold, Karel finds himself in trouble with the police, while Eva struggles to maintain control over their chaotic rise in society.

A budding teacher comes from Prague to the South Bohemian district town where her fiancé Jakub, a young promising engineer at the local paper mill, lives. Petra is getting to know her new colleagues at school and the children in her new class, and is practicing hard with the Komenium music group, whose members she has known since her studies. She also gets to know Jakub's colleagues and the director of the paper mill, to whose position Jakub would like to be appointed after his retirement. It is this desire for a high position that leads Jakub to behave and act in a way that Petra cannot approve of.

Dora, a lazy and evil woman, is in love with her servant, Hannes. Hannes, however, loves her sister-in-law, Margareta. When Dora learns about this, she vows revenge against the couple.

At the centre of Peter Patzak's existentialist film noir stands the hopeless struggle against the arms mafia in Czechoslovakia and its connections with Austria after the fall of the iron curtain.

A communist journalist from Prague is sent to Ravensbruck concentration camp.

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.

The top sport was also closely monitored in the communist era, and officials were naturally bothered that the pentathlon team failed to win the World Championships. But the measures that should have ensured redress were caught up in a web of behind-the-scenes machinations that backfired on the athletes themselves, their endurance and their family backgrounds. While the film has critical ambitions and wants to reveal much of what should have remained hidden from the public eye, it is a rather clumsy and schematic view, not very convincing in terms of realisation.

Otakar Vávra dedicated his latest film to events accompanying the devastation of the first World War. It takes place in representative centers of power, in the courts of Vienna, Berlin and Moscow. In parallel, it develops the fate of the Czech archivist, who will take part in the Serbian anti-Austrian branch.

The common theme of the short story film is the famous duels between two important historical figures: Pushkin and Casanova. Pushkin's tragic duel, which ended his life prematurely, is portrayed in connection with the creation of his short story "The Dirty Shot", while Casanova's story is conceived in a rather ironic and humorous way. The point is that the famous seducer never actually seduced, on the contrary, all his life he was in a constant battle with female seductions.

A short film about Prague, Prague residents, and the beginning of the weekend.

Based on a Jack London story, this is another attempt at a Western spectacle - after the short story triptych The Canyon of Gold - about a teenage boy who, after his father's death, lives in a gold-mining town. He even witnesses a cruel fight between two cowboys over a supposed treasure.

A sad story about a young girl who is forced to move from one foster home to another.

This international co-production, shot at Barrandov Studios with international cast including Czech actors is an attempt to create a sci-fi fantasy in the tradition of Star Wars and Star Trek. Sometime in the distant future, several earthlings turn up on a strange planet ruled over by a despotic ruler with magic powers. A young earth-man initiates a successful uprising.

Sudetenland, May 1945. A group of retreating German soldiers capture a group of young female workers, totally deployed in a chemical factory. He wants to use them as hostages during his advance to the American demarcation line. Together with them, they take refuge in a nearby castle, which soon becomes the site of the last battle that takes place both in the minds and in the backdrop of war-torn Czechoslovakia, shortly before liberation. A psychological probe as well as an intimate drama set within the walls of a small castle, it is a mosaic of mini-stories charting the fates, attitudes and thought processes of individual characters on both sides of the barricade.

A Czech medical television series that focuses on an emergency department. Each episode follows cases inspired by real-life stories and the cases of patients and healthcare professionals.