This week's guide to English-friendly Czech cinema and streaming

Power Ballad, the latest film from Irish filmmaker John Carney, follows an American expat wedding singer living in Dublin played by Paul Rudd, whose quiet life is upended when a song he wrote is stolen and turned into a chart-topping hit by a rising pop star (Nick Jonas).

The Prague Reporter notes that the film is “a warm, funny, heartfelt crowd-pleaser that earns every emotional payoff,” praising Rudd’s endearing performance as the heart of the story. Writer-director Carney previously made the Oscar-winning feature Once, which starred Czech singer-actress Markéta Irglová in a lead role.

The Last Whale Singer, an internationally co-produced animated feature backed by Czech studios, follows Vincent, a young humpback whale struggling to live up to the legacy of his mythical “Whale Singer” parents, whose song once protected the oceans.

Directed by Reza Memari and produced with significant Czech involvement, the film blends ecological themes with a coming-of-age fantasy built around sound, identity, and cooperation. Released in local cinemas earlier this year in a Czech dub, The Last Whale Singer is now streaming on Netflix in its original English-language version in Czechia.

This weekend marked the 84th anniversary of the Lidice massacre, one of the most devastating reprisals carried out by Nazi forces in occupied Czechoslovakia following the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in 1942. Petr Nikolaev’s 2011 historical drama The Butcher of Prague (Lidice) revisits the tragedy through a blend of personal stories and reconstructed history.

Set across multiple timelines, the film follows interconnected characters whose fates converge in the destruction of the village and its aftermath, offering a human-scale perspective on a national trauma. The film is currently streaming with English subtitles on Netflix and HBO Max in Czechia.