Czech cinema spotlight: Prague-shot 'Resident Evil' premieres this week

Resident Evil, the new survival horror film from Barbarian and Weapons director Zach Cregger, turns Prague into the zombie-infested Raccoon City. Starring Austin Abrams as a medical courier caught in a rapidly escalating outbreak, the video game adaptation filmed extensively across the Czech capital last year and arrives in cinemas on Sept. 17.

See Prague through the bloodshed: Local residents may recognize their own city beneath the blood and zombies. Holešovice’s Přístavní Street becomes a snow-covered Raccoon City street for a gruesome set piece, while the Negrelli Viaduct in Karlín and Prague Congress Center also appear among the film’s local locations.

In contrast to Resident Evil, Diamonds of the Night showcases a very different kind of survival thriller. Jan Němec’s stark 1964 film follows two young Jewish men who escape from a Holocaust train transporting them to their deaths and flee through the forests of the Sudetenland to escape Nazi pursuers.

Why watch now: One of the defining early works of the Czechoslovak New Wave, Diamonds of the Night became the movement’s first film to win a major international award when it took the Grand Prix at the Mannheim-Heidelberg International Film Festival in 1964. The film is screening with English subtitles on Sept. 16 at Kino Ponrepo, and can be streamed locally on KVIFF.tv and DAFilms.cz.