Zdena Smrčková

Set in Prague during the years leading up to World War II, this family saga tells the story of a cobbler named Vincenc Bursik (Vladimir Mensik), who uproots his clan from the country to the city, only to suffer the loss of his wife and the failure of his shoe business within months. When his daughter moves away to go live with a wealthy businessman as his mistress, Vincenc is left to take care of his two sons, who spend their days in a secret garden vying for the affections of a teenage girl.

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It’s a hot holiday season in the city and Alena is pretty much left to her own little self, fantasizing and running her personal daily rituals, keeping most people at a safe distance, yet trying to get male attention.

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Albrechtice near Jablonec. Sixteen-year-old Pavlínka Linková lives with her grandmother Barbara, a local midwife who raised her after the death of the girl's parents. The charming girl experiences her first amorous outburst towards Pavel Žák, a young textile worker in nearby Svárovo. Her grandmother, however, prevents her from contacting Pavel in every possible way. Firstly, as a midwife, she knows well what can happen, and secondly, she remembers her old adventures well. Love, however, cannot be ordered around, especially not by a worried grandmother. But there are other obstacles. The textile workers of Svárovo are planning a strike and a demonstration against redundancies and wage cuts, and the factory director is preparing a vigorous response. The year is 1870 and the unsuspecting Pavlina finds herself in the middle of events that will go down in history...

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A painter, whose art and views diverge considerably from the conventional society of a small American town, is suspected of murdering his wife. When passions are unleashed against him during a local election, he saves his life by fleeing to a cave in the nearby forest and from there, with the help of children whose trust he has gained, he organizes a successful search for the real murderer in the form of a children's game.

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A broadly drawn ideological epic set in the summer of 1947 in the borderlands of northern Bohemia: reactionary elements plot to undermine postwar social change while committed local communists struggle to organize workers and defend the emerging order. The narrative follows several archetypal figures—steadfast party activists, wary peasants, and obstructive reactionaries—whose clashes illustrate the claimed inevitability of working-class victory under communist leadership.

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The last winter of the Second World War in the Beskids. To escape the bombing, eight-year-old Dagmar is taken by her mother from Prague to a mountain village. From there, they take the narrow-gauge railroad to school...

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The shoemaker, Lájošek Cína, is a naive good-for-nothing with his heart on his sleeve, who, as the day grows long, never leaves his shop, where he also sleeps, and his only company is a small stray kitten. One day he is approached by a peculiar truck driver, Martin, who immediately adopts Lájošek as his new driver and becomes his life guide with a plan to rebuild his peaceful life from the ground up. In the Žižkov colony at Krejcárk he meets the charming Magda, with whom Lájošek falls in love and begins to live with her and her four children. Soon after, they are expecting their own and their life would seem ideal, but every happiness comes at a price...

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The story of four men who were arrested in a random raid on a small-town hotel during the Nazi occupation and taken to a school classroom. They don't know why or for how long. They are waiting for interrogation and, fearing possible accusation and punishment, try to prepare an alibi. Fear also affects their characters, which change under the stress, and eventually the one who is the fairest but softest of the two is insulted...

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In the village cemetery, the funeral of a married couple - victims of a car crash - is ending. The relatives unscrupulously take away the facilities of the dead people's little cottage, totally ignorant of the fate of eight-year old Ruda, whom the childless couple took from a children's home and adopted. Fortunately, an elderly lonesome uncle named Tony remains in the empty cottage and decides to take care of the boy, nicknamed Münchie after Baron Münchhausen for his wild imagination.

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