Kolya

The film is set in the late 1980s. The winds of change are already blowing. František Louka (Zdeněk Svěrák), a mature man, musician, and loner sensitive to female charms, feels that nothing significant will happen in his life anymore. But history has a sense of irony: quite unexpectedly, Franta becomes the legal guardian of five-year-old Kolya. A Russian boy. The Svěrák family captured a unique moment when our part of the world was freeing itself from the imposed brotherhood of the East, and against this backdrop they sketched a touching, warm story about two people divided by age, language, and even politics—not to mention experience—yet connected by far more. The film won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film and attracted an audience of 1.5 million viewers in the Czech Republic. The success of this comedy-drama also heralded the emergence of many new talents in Czech cinema. At the Hollywood ceremony on March 24, 1997, Jan addressed the statuette: “Dear Oscar, you kept me awake last night. I kept wondering where you would end up tonight. You’re going to Prague. You don’t know where that is—it’s in Europe. We promise you won’t be ashamed of our next films, and maybe one day we’ll make you a little brother”.

Maciej Gil

Jan Svěrák (b. 1965) – Czech director, screenwriter, and producer. Son of actor and screenwriter Zdeněk (born 1936), and father of editor František (born 1991) and actor Ondřej (born 2001). A graduate of the documentary film department at FAMU in Prague. He won a Student Academy Award for Oil Gobblers (1988) and an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film for Kolya (1996). He was also nominated for The Elementary School (1991) and received the Crystal Globe at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival for The Ride (1994), along with numerous Czech Lions and other awards. His films The Elementary School, Kolya, Dark Blue World (2001), and Empties (2007) rank among the biggest successes at the Czech box office. He has also appeared in cameo roles in films by his colleague Filip Renč.

Zdeněk Svěrák (b. 1936) – Czech actor, screenwriter, playwright, and author of numerous collections of short stories for children and adults (also published in Poland), as well as hundreds of song lyrics. Father of director, screenwriter, and producer Jan (born 1965), and grandfather of editor František (born 1991) and actor Ondřej (born 2001). Trained as a teacher of Czech language and literature. The recipient of countless awards, he has co-created films that won an Academy Award and received two further nominations. In 1967, he co-founded the Jára Cimrman Theatre, for which he wrote all the plays and where he continues to perform to this day. As a screenwriter, he has collaborated with some of the most prominent Czech directors, including Oldřich Lipský, Jiří Menzel, Vít Olmer, Ladislav Smoljak, and, of course, his son Jan. As an actor, he has appeared in films by the aforementioned directors as well as those by Věra Chytilová and Dušan Klein.

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