The Most Famous

FILM DIRECTORS from Czechia

This page contains a list of the greatest Czech Film Directors. The pantheon dataset contains 2,041 Film Directors, 25 of which were born in Czechia. This makes Czechia the birth place of the 13th most number of Film Directors behind Canada, and Ukraine.

Top 10

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the top 10 most legendary Czech Film Directors of all time. This list of famous Czech Film Directors is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity. Visit the rankings page to view the entire list of Czech Film Directors.

1. Miloš Forman (1932 - 2018)

With an HPI of 71.90, Miloš Forman is the most famous Czech Film Director. His biography has been translated into 74 different languages on wikipedia.

Jan Tomáš "Miloš" Forman (; Czech: [ˈmɪloʃ ˈforman]; 18 February 1932 – 13 April 2018) was a Czech-American film director, screenwriter, actor, and professor who rose to fame in his native Czechoslovakia before emigrating to the United States in 1968. Throughout Forman's career he won two Academy Awards, a BAFTA Award, three Golden Globe Awards, a Golden Bear, a César Award, and the Czech Lion. Forman was an important figure in the Czechoslovak New Wave. Film scholars and Czechoslovak authorities saw his 1967 film The Firemen's Ball as a biting satire on Eastern European Communism. The film was initially shown in theatres in his home country in the more reformist atmosphere of the Prague Spring. However, it was later banned by the Communist government after the invasion by the Warsaw Pact countries in 1968. Forman was subsequently forced to leave Czechoslovakia for the United States, where he continued making films. He received two Academy Awards for Best Director for the psychological drama One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) and the biographical drama Amadeus (1984). During this time, he also directed notable and acclaimed films such as Black Peter (1964), Loves of a Blonde (1965), Hair (1979), Ragtime (1981), Valmont (1989), The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996) and Man on the Moon (1999).

2. Jiří Menzel (1938 - 2020)

With an HPI of 63.72, Jiří Menzel is the 2nd most famous Czech Film Director. His biography has been translated into 41 different languages.

Jiří Menzel (Czech: [ˈjɪr̝iː ˈmɛntsl̩] ) (23 February 1938 – 5 September 2020) was 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.

3. Jan Švankmajer (b. 1934)

With an HPI of 62.29, Jan Švankmajer is the 3rd most famous Czech Film Director. His biography has been translated into 33 different languages.

Jan Švankmajer (born 4 September 1934) is a Czech film director, animator, writer, playwright and artist. He draws and makes free graphics, collage, ceramics, tactile objects and assemblages. In the early 1960s, he explored informel, which later became an important part of the visual form of his animated films. He is a leading representative of late Czech surrealism. In his film work, he created an unmistakable and quite specific style, determined primarily by a compulsively unorthodox combination of externally disparate elements. The anti-artistic nature of this process, based on collage or assemblage, functions as a meaning-making factor. The author himself claims that the intersubjective communication between him and the viewer works only through evoked associations, and his films fulfil their subversive mission only when, even in the most fantastic moments, they look like a record of reality. Some of the works he created together with his wife Eva Švankmajerová.

4. Věra Chytilová (1929 - 2014)

With an HPI of 59.84, Věra Chytilová is the 4th most famous Czech Film Director. Her biography has been translated into 36 different languages.

Věra Chytilová (Czech: [ˈvjɛra ˈxɪtɪlovaː]; 2 February 1929 – 12 March 2014) was an avant-garde Czech film director and pioneer of Czech cinema. Banned by the Czechoslovak government in the 1960s, she is best known for her Czech New Wave film Sedmikrásky (Daisies). Her subsequent films screened at international film festivals, including Vlčí bouda (1987), which screened at the 37th Berlin International Film Festival, A Hoof Here, a Hoof There (1989), which screened at the 16th Moscow International Film Festival, and The Inheritance or Fuckoffguysgoodday (1992), which screened at the 18th Moscow International Film Festival. For her work, she received the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, Medal of Merit and the Czech Lion award.

5. Karel Zeman (1910 - 1989)

With an HPI of 59.36, Karel Zeman is the 5th most famous Czech Film Director. His biography has been translated into 28 different languages.

Karel Zeman (3 November 1910 – 5 April 1989) was a Czech film director, artist, production designer and animator, best known for directing fantasy films combining live-action footage with animation. Because of his creative use of special effects and animation in his films, he has often been called the "Czech Méliès".

6. G. W. Pabst (1885 - 1967)

With an HPI of 59.35, G. W. Pabst is the 6th most famous Czech Film Director. His biography has been translated into 36 different languages.

Georg Wilhelm Pabst (25 August 1885 – 29 May 1967) was an Austrian film director and screenwriter. He started as an actor and theater director, before becoming one of the most influential German-language filmmakers during the Weimar Republic.

7. Jiří Trnka (1912 - 1969)

With an HPI of 57.84, Jiří Trnka is the 7th most famous Czech Film Director. His biography has been translated into 31 different languages.

Jiří Trnka (Czech: [ˈjɪr̝iː ˈtr̩ŋka]; 24 February 1912 – 30 December 1969) was a Czech puppet-maker, illustrator, motion-picture animator and film director. In addition to his extensive career as an illustrator, especially of children's books, he is best known for his work in animation with puppets, which began in 1946. Most of his films were intended for adults and many were adaptations of literary works. Because of his influence in animation, he was called "the Walt Disney of Eastern Europe", despite the great differences between their works. He received the international Hans Christian Andersen Medal for illustrators in 1968, recognizing his career contribution to children's literature.

8. Karel Reisz (1926 - 2002)

With an HPI of 56.19, Karel Reisz is the 8th most famous Czech Film Director. His biography has been translated into 29 different languages.

Karel Reisz (21 July 1926 – 25 November 2002) was a Czech-born British filmmaker and film critic, one of the pioneers of the new realist strain in British cinema during the 1950s and 1960s. Two of the best-known films he directed are Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960), a classic of kitchen sink realism, and the romantic period drama The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981).

9. Václav Vorlíček (1930 - 2019)

With an HPI of 55.33, Václav Vorlíček is the 9th most famous Czech Film Director. His biography has been translated into 23 different languages.

Václav Vorlíček (3 June 1930 – 5 February 2019) was a Czech film director. He studied filmmaking at FAMU from 1951 to 1956, and began directing feature films since the early 1960s. His filmography includes several comedies made in collaboration with screenwriter Miloš Macourek. He directed several children's and fairytale films, most notably Tři oříšky pro Popelku (1973), a Christmas film classic in many European countries. The director was a widower and father of two daughters. He died in his hometown Prague, aged 88, from cancer.

10. František Čáp (1913 - 1972)

With an HPI of 53.52, František Čáp is the 10th most famous Czech Film Director. His biography has been translated into 20 different languages.

František Čáp (7 December 1913 – 12 January 1972), also known as Franz Cap in Germany, was a Czech and later a Yugoslav film director and screenwriter. He directed 32 films between 1939 and 1970. Having created Slovene film classics such as Vesna, Ne čakaj na maj and Our Car, he is also one of the most popular directors of early Slovene cinema in 1950s and the 1960s.

People

Pantheon has 28 people classified as Czech film directors born between 1885 and 1967. Of these 28, 3 (10.71%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living Czech film directors include Jan Švankmajer, Jan Svěrák, and Jan Hřebejk. The most famous deceased Czech film directors include Miloš Forman, Jiří Menzel, and Věra Chytilová. As of April 2024, 3 new Czech film directors have been added to Pantheon including Gustav Machatý, Martin Frič, and Břetislav Pojar.