Movies by Jan Budař

Talks with TGM

Talks with TGM

On 26 September 1928, Karel Capek and President T.G. Masaryk meet in the gardens of Topolcianky castle to decide about the fate of their joint literary work. Their fiction film dialogue is based on quotes from a future book and their mutual correspondence, considerably freeing the original format of literary conversation from binding conventions. Capek and Masaryk reproach and offend each other, but they also ask key personal questions and questions about the social functions of a writer and politician respectively. "It's a film about two ex...

Empties

Empties

Czech literature teacher Josef Tkaloun, who is past retirement age, realises one day that he no longer understands his pupils, and so he quits… dramatically. What he does not predict is that in doing this he will lose his sense of place in society.

Delight

Delight

The film's main theme is obsession. An obsession with love, with art, originality, copying, with success, money and... with oneself. Sooner or later, if we lose our rational upper hand over it and let ourselves be dragged down by it, every obsession leads to destruction. But it is only when being dragged down, in spite of all the cuts and bruises, that we find a unique DELIGHT, if only for a few short moments - and what else is life really about? It is like a drug. What at first seems to be weak and trivial is capable of expanding and growin...

Murderous Tales

Murderous Tales

MURDEROUS TALES is a special effect animated feature film combining live actors with 3D/2D animation, puppets and back projection. It contains three stories: Antonio Cacto, Lighthouse and The Big Man, plus three ultra-short films called Charge the Dragon. Each episode uses different production technology and is in a different genre, but both their form and their content are related. All the episodes are about double standards and the topics of heroism and death. Something very small meets something very big (a tiny knight meets a huge drago...

The Butcher of Prague

The Butcher of Prague

Czechoslovakia, 1941. As the war continues, Reich Protector Reinhard Heydrich arrives in Nazi-occupied Prague and establishes a regime of terror that will force freedom fighters to act. But the price to pay will be too high.

Woman Without Piano

Woman Without Piano

A quietly comic look at a Madrid housewife's attempt to escape from her mundane and tedious existence. Encountering mostly impersonal bureaucracy, she has no specific plan for what she wants to do, just the fervent hope that she will find the adventure she's so desperately seeking.

Climbing Paradise

Climbing Paradise

The story of the dramatic fate of the Czech climber Josef speck and his comrades, executed by the Nazis in April 1945 in Theresienstadt.

Dirty Soul

Dirty Soul

When sisters Jana and Anna meet their half-brother at their father's funeral, the siblings' lives entwine as they navigate relationships and setbacks.

The Exhibition

The Exhibition

The film tells about a small museum, where the economic boom has not yet arrived. It appears as if time has stopped in this national museum, a museum which should serve as a show window for Slovakia. Stuffed animals are covered with dust and the three employees working as caretakers of the huge building look like the museum exhibits themselves.

Laika

Laika

Life is not easy for Laika, a dog on the outskirts of a big Russian city. She is caught and forcibly retrained to become a pioneer in astronautics. Soon after her lift-off into space, a number of animals follow that are hurriedly launched from Houston and Baikonur. The animals travel astray, but finally manage, with the help of a black hole, to colonize a faraway planet. After a short period of harmonious, undisturbed co-existence with indigenous life forms, however, first human cosmonaut run ashore on their planet, and their harmonious life...

Love Life of a Gentle Coward

Love Life of a Gentle Coward

Sasa is an unsuccessful writer who works as a restaurant critic. His life starts to change when he meets and falls in love with Ines who works in a private sports center. However, things get complicated when he writes a bad review for the restaurant owned by a well-connected man. To get his life in order, Sasa has to face up to all of his character flaws.

Princ Mamánek

Princ Mamánek

Insect

Insect

The Dung Beetle is late, the Parasite is asleep and Mrs Larva is more interested in her knitting than the director’s instructions. It’s clear: this amateur theatre company has a long way to go before they can perform their version of The Insect Play, a famous satirical work from 1922 by the brothers Karel and Josef Čapek which features insects with decidedly human traits: greed, egocentrism, jealousy.

The Magic Quill

The Magic Quill

The devil's magic quill keeps a tight record of sins. But when this precious artifact is stolen, a demon must find a way to make things right again.

Osudové peníze

Osudové peníze

Hrubeš a Mareš jsou kamarádi do deště

Hrubeš a Mareš jsou kamarádi do deště

The Ferrari Dino Girl

The Ferrari Dino Girl

It's nighttime in Prague, 21 August 1968. Soviet troops and tanks are occupying the city - random attacks, soldiers shooting, bodies lying dead on the sidewalk. With an impromptu crew, the director (Karel Roden) captures some unique evidence - material which is, however, worthless in occupied Prague; it has to be shown to the rest of the world. So, while the Soviets are concocting false reports of heartfelt receptions without military resistance for propaganda purposes, the director sets off on a risky trip across the closed Czech-Austrian b...

Heart Beat 3D

Heart Beat 3D

A visual dreamscape of Prague streets, a hallucinatory vision of a world from the operating table for robotic heart surgeries, collaged together with the stories narrated by the mysterious Dr. B, who is a gifted surgeon at the centre of a conspiracy and a criminal ring trafficking in human parts, especially hearts. Because that’s where the world has ended up – humans thirsting for endless lives and shadowy businessmen and dealmakers taking advantage of this hunger. Set to original music by Němec’s student and fellow filmmaker Petr Marek and ...

Praho, má lásko

Praho, má lásko