I Served the King of England treads lightly through a dark time--before, during, and after World War II in Eastern Europe. This cinematic fable follows an impish Czechoslovakian man who leads a modestly charmed life as a waiter at hotels and brothels, sleeping with prostitutes and chambermaids as he dreams of wealth and plays pranks on the rich and bourgeois. But when he falls in love with a fervent Nazi woman, glimpses of a bleak reality intrude into his whimsical life. I Served the King of England doesn't delve in to the horrors of the concentration camps (though it does explore some strange, lesser-known corners of the Nazi psyche).
Set somewhere in the Czech countryside during the 1980s, the film focuses around the village simpleton Otik and the portly farm collective truck driver who has to work with him. Along the way, viewers meet all of the often odd denizens of the village. Menzel is a masterful director as his film is both funny and endearing. The actors also do a fantastic job. What makes this film so outstanding is that it is an almost perfect reflection of rural life in this part of Europe, which anyone who has spent even a little time in the villages of e.g. the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, etc. can attest to.
Stéphane, a young French man from Paris, travels to Romania. He is looking for the singer Nora Luca, whom his father had heard all the time before his death. Wandering along a frozen road, he meets old Izidor, a member of the Roma (Tinker) and tells him of Nora Luca. Izidor seems to understand and takes him to his village. Stéphane believes that Izidor will take him to Nora Luca when the time has come. So, he lives in the tinker village for several months. The other inhabitants dislike him at first (as he comes from those who call them thieves and attack their folks) but when they as they get to know him better, they grow to like him. In summer, the ice between him and beautiful Sabina finally cracks, and as she is able to translate between the Roma and him, Stéphane finds out that nobody ever understood a thing that he had said.
In World War II Nazi occupied Czechoslovakia, a childless couple, Josef and Marie Cizek, can only watch while the Jewish family of their employers, the Wieners, are first removed from their own home to a spare room in their house by the Nazis, then removed to the far off facility of Thierenstadt. Years later, young David Wiener, the sole surviving member of that family has managed to escape and make it to the Cizeks. Although fully aware of the extreme danger of harbouring a Jew in the Third Reich, the Cizek's can not permit themselves to leave David to certain death and agree to hide him. However, this decision leads to terrible danger of discovery by the Nazis and especially their friend and Nazi collaborator, Horst Prohazka, who is attracted to Marie. With desperate cleverness and luck, the Cizeks struggle to keep the secret, even when Horst begins to suspect. In doing so, they find themselves making unorthodox choices and learning about the true nature of the people around them.
The shepherd Gombo lives with his wife, three children and grandmother in a tent on the Mongolian steppe. They are pleased with their rustic conditions, until a Russian truck driver, Serguei, gets stuck with his truck nearby. The cultural gap between Gombo and Serguie seems invincible. But maybe they can learn a few things from each other?
In 1919, Hungarian Communists aid the Bolsheviks' defeat of Czarists, the Whites. Near the Volga, a monastery and a field hospital are held by one side then the other. Captives are executed or sent running naked into the woods. Neither side has a plan, and characters the camera picks out soon die. A White Cossack officer kills a Hungarian and is executed by his own superiors when he tries to rape a milkmaid. At the hospital, White officers order nurses into the woods, dressed in finery, to waltz. A nurse aids the Reds, then they accuse her of treason for following White orders. Red soldiers walk willingly, singing, into an overwhelming force. War seems chaotic and arbitrary.
Matej Minac's heartbreaking and poignant story of one family's experience at the onset of World War II is inspired by the heroics of English stockbroker Nicholas Winton who saved hundreds of Czech Jewish children from the Nazis and is loosely based on his own mother's personal memories of the time.
Gripping human drama. Sumptuous period epic. Glorious celebration of the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. This marvelous winner of eight Academy Awards(R) portrays the rivalry between the genius Mozart (Tom Hulce) and the jealous court composer (Best Actor Oscar(R) Winner F.Murray Abraham) who may have ruined Mozart's career and shortened his life.
A bittersweet comedy starring the great Vlastimil Brodský as Fanda, an old man who refuses to grow up. Despite pleas from his exasperated wife who wants him to make serious decisions about the future, Fanda ignores the nagging and spends his days seeking amusement and adventure.
Two very different people meet and fall in love in "Zelary," the Oscar-nominated (Best Foreign Language Film, 2003) romantic epic from director Ondrej Trojan. Eliska, a sophisticated medical student, first meets Joza at a Prague hospital, where her blood saves the injured sawmill worker's life. But Eliska also works with the Czech resistance and when she's betrayed to the Gestapo, Joza agrees to hide the young woman in his romote mountain village of Zelary. Forced to marry the rough-hewn peasant and pose as his wife, Eliska is at first defiant and angry. But with the passing of time, she comes to realize that there's more to Joza than first meets the eye. And so, even as the war rages around them, Eliska and Joza soon find themselves deeply and passionately in love, until an unexpected twist of fate threatens to put their extraordinary romance to the ultimate test.
Shadow of the Holy Book exposes the immorality of international companies doing business with the dictatorship of oil-and-gas-rich Turkmenistan, thus helping to hide its human rights and free speech abuses - all in the name of profit and corporate greed
Journalist-turned-historian James Pettifer describes the KLA’s transformation from a scrappy band of zealots into a giant-killing military/political force.