According to the wide of Oscar-winning Czech director Jiri Menzel, he died at 82 after fighting serious health issues. In 1968, Menzel won an Academy Award in 1968 for the best foreign-language movie on World War II drama Closely Watched Trains. Menzel was one of the leading celebrities in the Czech New Wave cinema during the 1960s, along with One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest director Milos Forman.

Influential Czech director Jiri Menzel, whose 1966 movie “Closely Watched Trains” won the Academy Award for best foreign-language film, has died at age 82, his wife, Olga Menzelova, said on her Facebook page#EgyptToday #Egypt https://t.co/i8Ml2oM3ao

— Egypt Today Magazine (@EgyptTodayMag) September 8, 2020

Olga Menzelova, his wife, said that he died on Saturday. The legend rarely appeared on public platforms after his brain surgery in 2017. She thanked Jirka for every single day she spent with him. He called those days extraordinary. She also felt grateful for the last three hard years.

In 1962, Manzel studied film production in Prague. The first feature film of Menzel “Closely Watched Trains,” based on the story of a novel of Bohumil Hrabal. Following the Oscar win of the film, Menzel, he teams up with the novelist several times. In 2006, Menzel said that he had more luck than reason as reflecting on the Academy Award win. He valued the lifetime friendship with Hrabal else than the medals and awards he received for the movie.

Banning of his film Larks on a String

The Communist government banned his film Larks on a String in 1969. He also took the story of the movie from a novel of Hrabal. The movie told the story of people forced to work in a re-education camp. Finally, the film was released in 1990 after the fall of the government. It also won an award at the Berlin International Film Festival that year. Furthermore, he received a second Oscar nomination in 1987 for his movie My Sweet Little Village. The last film performance of Menzel was in 2018’s “The Interpreter.” It told the story of a citizen who seeks revenge on the ex-SS soldier who killed his parents.

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