Jiří Menzel (born February 23, 1938, Prague) is a Czech film director, theatre director, actor, and screenwriter. His films often combine a humanistic view of the world with sarcasm and provocative cinematography. Some of these films are adapted from works by Czech writers such as Bohumil Hrabal and Vladislav Vančura. He became famous in 1967, when his first feature film, Closely Watched Trains, won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. His controversial film Larks on a String was [...]