On Christmas Eve, 1944, in Nazi-occupied Slovakia, the Kubiš family grapples with survival amidst brutal reprisals. Marián collaborates as a fascist guard leader, while his sister Angela has an affair with their Nazi lodger, Major Brecker. The situation escalates when their younger son, Juraj, a...
It is 5 May 1945 and the uprising against the hated German occupiers has broken out in Prague. The Czech guards open the gate of the Pankrác prison to allow the prisoners to escape en masse. Many of them are shot dead by the German guards but young Ruda (Jaromír Hanzlík) manages to run away. He...
When rumors spread about a "child prodigy" among the Mozarts in Salzburg, the archbishop orders an investigation in which the seven-year-old Wolfgang has to demonstrate his talent before a committee of scholars. Soon afterwards, Leopold Mozart and his son are traveling all over Europe to play for...
During the Nazi occupation of a Czech city civilians are being rounded up on the slightest of pretexts and shot. One day three high school boys who crack jokes about a recently deceased "hero of the Reich" are pulled out of school by the Gestapo.
In the aftermath of World War II, a soldier takes charge of a manor formerly owned by a German family and falls in love with the daughter, now a maid. Their relationship forces him to confront the tension between his love and his conscience.
Two short stories by Karel Čintamani a ptáci An avid collector of carpets, MUDr. Vitásek discovers a unique piece in Mrs. Severýnová's junk shop - a Persian carpet with a pattern of birds. As a connoisseur, he knows that there are only three of these carpets in existence and they are all owned...
Autumn 1944, the Slovak National Uprising is suppressed and the fighters must withdraw to the mountains. Commander Repta’s unit takes along the thirteen-year old Zuzka, who lost her home and all her relatives in the rebellion. But the enemy brutally pursues them and Repta therefore must divide...
Jan Zika is the legendary hero of the communist resistance movement during World War II and leading functionary of the second underground Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia.
The exemplary accountant Antonín Safránek lives his orderly life as a citizen of a small town. His wife Eliska brings up their three children and desperately tries to get by on her husband's low salary every month. At the same time, she sadly watches the luxurious life of their neighbor and other...
A mobile chapel of St. Florian is moved every week between the villages of Zbořov and Spáňovice. The farmer Florian Jírovec, who has to provide his horses for this event, is tired of it and therefore supports the proposal to build a proper brick chapel in Zbořov. The saint himself visits him...
The late summer of 1918. Paul, Willi and Heinrich from an age-old German town are good friends, although there is a great deal that divides them. Heinrich comes from an officer's family with an army tradition and is preparing to enter cadet college. Paul's father and grandfather are workers, and...
During the Second World War, an old fortress is transformed into a detention camp for arrested allied generals who the Germans provide with every possible comfort. In the nearby garrison camp, however, hundreds of captured private soldiers try to survive hunger and cold.
Ing. Bernard announces that his wife has not returned from visiting relatives in Berlin. Lieutenant Tereza Machátová, who together with Captain Landa is investigating the matter, puts the facts into connection with the discovery of the drowned woman's body.
In 1757, the second year of the Seven Years' War, Frederick II the Great stands at the gates of Prague. He has been trying to take the city for weeks, as the enemy commander Duke Charles of Lorraine is inside. Frederick has just defeated him, but the tide could soon turn against the Prussians, as...
In Vražda v hotelu Excelsior, the interwar period homicide detective squad from Prague investigates the murder of a wealthy woman, Mrs Matoušová, which threatens the reputation of the eponymous luxury hotel popular with Prague’s elite. Even the retired police inspector Mrázek (František...
This film, chronicling the last days of Czech resistance fighter Maruska Kuderikova (played by Magda Vasaryova), is based on her diaries. Though she was tortured and eventually executed by the Nazis, her diaries indicate that she was optimistic for the humanity of her captors and did not by any...
Professor Wilkens has invented a formula for a new type of fuel and puts it on a microfiche that he sends to his daughter and her bodyguard, but multiple different mysterious groups, including the "Chinese Carnation", would kill to get their hands on it.