Actor: Zdeněk Svěrák

foto attore
Birthday: 1936-03-28
Born in: Prague, Czechoslovakia [now Czech Republic]
Biography: From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Zdeněk Svěrák (born 28 March 1936 in Prague) is a Czech actor, humorist and scriptwriter. He is one of the most popular Czech cultural personalities. In 1989, he was a member of the jury at the 39th Berlin International Film Festival. In 1958, he graduated in Czech language and literature at the Faculty of Education of Charles University in Prague. He has worked in a wide variety of capacities. His work contains more than 300 musical texts, plays and more than ten movies. Among his film scripts are Kolya (Czech: Kolja, Academy Award winning film) and The Elementary School (Czech: Obecná Škola, nomination for Academy Award), both directed by his son Jan Svěrák. With his close friend Ladislav Smoljak, he created the fictional personality (universal genius, inventor, sportsman, criminalist, poet, writer and philosopher) Jára Cimrman who won the voting for The Greatest Czech in 2005 (only the fact that Cimrman is fictional prevented him from actually winning). Zdeněk Svěrák also founded a charity organization Paraple (in English, "Umbrella") which focuses on helping paralyzed individuals.

Known for

Kolya

After a fictitious marriage with a Russian emigrant, Cellisten Louka, a Czech man, must suddenly take responsibility for her son. However, it’s not long before the communication barrier is broken between the two new family members.
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7.4
Kolya
Larks on a String

In post-WWII Communist Czechoslovakia, several characters considered bourgeois are sentenced to work in a junkyard for rehabilitation. Among them is a young man who pines for a female convict.
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7.0
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Larks on a String

1990

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The Elementary School

The time is 1945-46. 10 year old Eda and his friend Tonda live in a small village outside Prague. In school, their class is so wild and indisciplined that their teacher quits and is replaced by the militant Igor Hnidzo. He is very strict – but also very fair. His weakness though, is his interest in young women.
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7.4
The+Elementary+School
The Elementary School

1991

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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.
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6.8
Empties
Ball Lightning

A comedy about exchange of 12 apartments , which, its organizer, lawyer Radosta, rightly called Action Ball Lightning. To prepare, organize and execute the exchange of twelve apartments is a work worthy champions. Radosta, who was excellently played by Rudolf Hrušínský, solved all sudden difficulties and complications on the fly and with grace. To be sure that the on the D-day everything goes well he prepares a little rehearsal, which reveals many minor issues caused for example by wedding ordered to inappropriate term or hesitation of some participants. Last but not least a night exercise announced by drunk psychologist Knotků, creates a lot of confusion that nearly sabotaged the whole operation.
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6.7
Ball+Lightning
Ball Lightning

1979

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My Sweet Little Village

The movie's main storyline follows the life of Otík, a young man, in a tight-knit village community. The sweet-tempered Otík works as an assistant truck driver with Mr. Pávek, his older colleague and practical-minded neighbor. Pávek's family takes care of Otík, whose parents are dead. However, the two coworkers become at odds over Otík's inability to perform even the simplest tasks. Pávek demands that Otík be transferred to assist another driver, who happens to be a choleric and suspicious man named Turek (Turk in Czech). Rather than work with Turek, Otík decides to accept an offer of employment in Prague, but finds he does not fit in to the city life. After discovering that the transfer of Otík to Prague was a trick by a crooked politician to get a deal on Otík's large inherited house, Pávek agrees to give Otík a second chance and retrieves him from the city to resume their work together.
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7.4
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My Sweet Little Village

1985

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Kooky

Young Ondra has asthma and so his parents throw away his favourite toy: a musty old stuffed bear named Kooky. That night Ondra dreams that Kooky is determined to find his way back home from the dump. In the boy's fantasy, the bear gets lost in a forest occupied by strange animals and remarkable beings that he never heard of while living on the toy shelf in Ondra's room. And of course even in this small imaginary world, true good exists as does real evil, which Kooky must face up to in order to become a real hero.
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6.7
Kooky
The Snowdrop Festival

This movie is based on texts of Bohumil Hrabal, world-known Czech prosaic. It's a story (in a form of a mosaic of short episodes and pictures) about the sadness and happiness of inhabitants of Kersko (Kersko is a small woody area full of cottages and roods). These people are both simple and sensitive, they have their own pleasures (e.g. Leli is a collector of cheap, but inutile things) and the greatest delight of all of them is a hunting. Crude poetics of amateur hunting is screened by dreamy pictures of this area. Menzel mixes sentimental lyricism and rough (but not vulgar!) humor and the outcome is the never-ending landscape of continuous life in the proximate nearness of nature. The performances of actors are brilliant. Both Rudolf Hrusinsky as a Franz and Jaromír Hanzlik as a Leli have nonrecurring charm bottomed on a pain and inebriation. Only the music is not perfect: Jiri Sust usually assembled his film music from his older works and in this movie there is many quotations.
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6.6
The+Snowdrop+Festival
The Snowdrop Festival

1984

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Marecek, Pass Me the Pen!

This comedy is about one average family. The father works as master in the factory and his son is studying on high school. One day father must start to visit the evening school. It's the same school as his son visiting. The lives both students are connecting together. The son must teach the math and physics his own father. The father getting to know, that the life of the students is not simple as he supposed.
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7.9
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Marecek, Pass Me the Pen!

1976

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Joachim, Put It in the Machine

A sincere provincial young man, Frantisek Koudelka leaves to work in Prague. For the trip he buys a computer made horoscope with biorhythms charts, marked according to his date of birth, there are trappy, precarious, unsuccessful and even critical days and few successful days. The clumsy luckless person Frantisek has finally a guidance for his life.
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7.2
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Joachim, Put It in the Machine

1974

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You Are a Widow, Sir

After a soldier cuts off the arm of king's cousin, king decides to deactivate the army. Of course, generals don't like it at all and they try to kill the king. The assassin should be artificial body in the shape of actress Evelina Keleti and with brain of psychotic serial killer Fany Stubová. They also manage to kill king's astrologer Stuart Hampl, who warns the king. Accidentally, Hampl's brain is implanted into assassin's body, actress Keleti is killed and chaos begins.
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You Are a Widow, Sir

1971

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