The discussion of Jiří Fisher, former editor of Voice of America, with Tomáš Töpfer, actor and politician, will follow after the screening of the film "The Man Who Stood in the Way", depicting the dramatic events of August 21, 1968 in Czechoslovakia. Tomáš Töpfer played the main character of Dr. Frantisek Kriegel, doctor, politician and hero of the Prague Spring in the film.
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Program will be in Czech.
The Man Who Stood in the Way (Czechia, Ukraine, Lithuania, 2023; duration 120 min) is a thrilling drama focusing on breaking of characters, bending their will and beliefs and in the end, changing lives of millions of people. Frantisek Kriegel, doctor, politician and hero of the Prague Spring was arrested along with five other political leaders (Dubcek, Cernik, Smrkovsky and Spacek) and abducted to Moscow. There, even under threat of death, he was the only Czechoslovak politician to stand up to Brezhnev by refusing to sign the Moscow Protocol that would rubber-stamp the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia.
Tomáš Töpfer (1951) is a Czech actor, director, screenwriter, university teacher and politician. At the moment, he is the director of the Prague's theatre Divadlo na Vinohradech, and he serves his second term as Senator in the upper chamber of the Czech Republic's Parliament since 2022.
Jiří Fisher (1947) was born in Czechoslovakia and studied Janacek's Academy of Performing Arts. Since 1981, he has been living in the United States of America, where he starred eg. in the NBC TV soap opera "Another World" and worked as editor in the Czech section of Voice of America. He maintains his current status as a Producer / Director and International Broadcaster for Voice of America, for which he has received awards for excellence in programming.
