Jirí Menzel

Biography

Jiří Menzel (born February 23, 1938, Prague) is a Czech film director, theatre director, actor, and screenwriter. His films often combine a humanistic view of the world with sarcasm. Some of them are adapted from works by Czech writers such as Bohumil Hrabal and Vladislav Vančura. He became famous in 1967, when his first feature film Closely Watched Trains (based on the novel by Hrabal) won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. His film Larks on a String was filmed in 1969, but was initially banned by the Czech government. It was finally released in 1990 after the fall of the Communist regime. Menzel was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film again in 1986 with his dark comedy My Sweet Little Village.

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