Jiří Menzel (born February 23, 1938, Prague) is 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. He became famous in 1967, when his first feature film, Closely Watched Trains, won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. His controversial film Larks on a String was [...]

Lelouch was born in the 9th arrondissement of Paris and is the son of Charlotte (née Abeilard) and Simon Lelouch.[1] His father was born to an Algerian Jewish family while his mother was a convert to Judaism. [2][3] Lelouch says that his first contact with cinema was very young: "My mother hid me in movie theaters when I was little. We were wanted by the Gestapo. [...] Cinema, for starters, saved my life."[4] Of his personal faith, he says "Today [...]

Manoel Cândido Pinto de Oliveira, (born December 11, 1908) is a Portuguese film director born in Cedofeita, Porto. He began working on films in the late 1920s, but did not receive international recognition until the early 1970s. Since the late 1980s he has been one of the most prolific working film directors and continues to make an average of one film per year past the age of 100. In March 2008 he was reported to be the oldest active film [...]