Jiří Menzel (born February 23rd, 1938), is a Czech film director, theatre director, actor and scriptwriter.
He became famous in 1967, when his first feature film Closely Watched Trains (based on the novel by Hrabal) won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
He was nominated again in the same category in 1986 with his dark comedy My Sweet Little Village.
His films often combine a humanistic view of the world with sarcasm. Some of them are adapted from works by Czech writers such as Bohumil Hrabal and Vladislav Vancura.
