Jiri Menzel
Jiří Menzel (1938–2020) was a Czech director, screenwriter, and actor, one of the central figures of the Czechoslovak New Wave. A graduate of FAMU and a longtime collaborator of the writer Bohumil Hrabal, he built much of his career around adaptations of Hrabal's tragicomic prose. His films combined deadpan humour, gentle eroticism, and an affectionate eye for small-town and railway-station life with a clear-eyed awareness of historical trauma. His acclaimed films include Closely Watched Trains, Capricious Summer, Larks on a String, My Sweet Little Village, and I Served the King of England.