Reading time: 4 minutes 
Summary for: This week's guide to English-friendly Czech cinema and streaming🇬🇧 This Week's English-Friendly Screenings
Prague’s Edison Filmhub, recently ranked by TimeOut among the best cinemas in the world, will celebrate its seventh birthday on Sunday, May 31 with a special lineup of screenings. English-subtitled films include Brazilian dystopian drama The Blue Trail, Hungarian thriller Sunset, and Alpine drama A Piece of Sky.
Also screening with English subtitles is a pre-premiere of Rebecca Zlotowski’s A Private Life, a French thriller starring Jodie Foster as a psychiatrist who becomes convinced that the death of a long-time patient is actually murder. If you can't make the preview screening, A Private Life opens in Prague cinemas from June 11.
- May 25: Norwegian drama Solomamma, about a journalist who becomes determined to uncover the identity of her child’s sperm donor, screens with English subtitles at Edison Filmhub.
- May 25: The historical thriller The Disappearance of Josef Mengele plays with English subtitles at Edison Filmhub (also May 26 and May 29-30).
- May 26: Věra Chytilová’s Prefab Story portrays life in a Czech housing estate through fragmented social micro-stories. Screening with English subtitles at Bio Oko.
- May 26: A Greek-language fable about a runaway chicken, Hen screens with English subtitles at Edison Filmhub (also at Bio Oko).
- May 27: Paolo Sorrentino’s Grace follows an ageing Italian president confronting mortality and political responsibility, plays with English subtitles at Kino Světozor.
- May 27: Oscar-nominated French animated feature Little Amélie or the Character of Rain plays with English subtitles at Kino Aero.
- May 27: Fantasy classic Jason and the Argonauts, with Ray Harryhausen's classic stop-motion effects, plays in English at Kino Aero.
- May 28: Pom Poko, Studio Ghibli’s animated tale of shape-shifting tanuki resisting urban expansion, screens with English subtitles at Bio Oko.
- May 28: Kino Aero hosts a claustrophobic double feature with 90s classic Cube followed by the premiere of new liminal horror Backrooms.
- May 29: Surreal Aussie thriller The Surfer, starring Nicolas Cage as a man who violently clashes with local surfers, screens at Edison Filmhub followed by a Q&A.
- May 29: Space Adventure Cobra: The Movie, an anime sci-fi adventure directed by Osamu Dezaki, screens with English subtitles at Kino Aero.
- May 29: Věra Chytilová’s surrealist satire Daisies screens in a digitally restored version with English subtitles at Kino Ponrepo.
- May 30: From the Metropolitan Opera in New York, El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego, about Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, comes to the screen at Kino Světozor.
- May 31: František Vláčil’s Marketa Lazarová, a landmark of Czech and world cinema, screens in a digitally restored version with English subtitles at Kino Ponrepo.
🍿 New wide releases
🇨🇿 Czech Cinema Spotlight
The new documentary Prague Spring – Window to the World marks the 80th anniversary of the Prague Spring music festival, tracing its development from its postwar origins to its current status as one of Europe’s leading classical music events.
Featuring interviews with figures including Semjon Byčkov, Václav Hudeček, Jiří Chvála, and Patricia Kopatchinskaja, the documentary will have its theatrical premiere in Czech with English subtitles at Kino 35 on May 25, with free entry (reservation required), and is also available to watch (without subtitles) via Czech Television’s iVysílání.
📺 The Streaming Watchlist
- After four seasons in series form, John Krasinski returns as the titular CIA analyst in the feature film Jack Ryan: Ghost War, now streaming on Prime Video.
- A sexist ad exec wakes up in a world where women hold all the power in Ladies First, a new satire starring Sacha Baron Cohen and Rosamund Pike now streaming on Netflix.
- Alfred Molina, Geena Davis, Alfre Woodard, and Bill Pullman star in The Boroughs, the latest series from the creators of Stranger Things. All eight episodes are now streaming on Netflix.
- Spider-Noir, starring Nicolas Cage as an aged detective Spider-Man in 1930s New York, releases all eight episodes May 27 on Prime Video in Czechia.
- Tatiana Maslany and Jake Johnson star in the new crime drama Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed; the first two episodes are now streaming on Apple TV+, with new installments Wednesdays.
🎞️ The Throwback
Jaromil Jireš’s The Joke, adapted from Milan Kundera’s debut novel, is a key work of the Czech New Wave and a striking reflection on personal betrayal, political repression, and the fragility of historical memory. The film follows a man whose life is derailed after a seemingly minor joke leads to severe consequences under Stalinist-era discipline.
Banned at the start of the normalization period and long shelved, The Joke has since been restored and reappraised as one of the era’s defining films. It screens in a digitally restored version with English subtitles at Kino Ponrepo on May 30 and is also available to stream on KVIFF.TV.
