Karel Fridrich
Known For & Full Filmography32 Titles
Drama Series - 1976, 16 episodes • Main Cast Role
Thirty Cases of Major Zeman is a Czechoslovak action-drama television show intended as a political propaganda to support the official attitude of the communist party. The series were filmed in the 1970s. Each episode encompasses one year, and investigations are stylized to that year. Most are inspired by real cases. The series follows the life of police investigator Jan Zeman during his career from 1945 to 1975.
Movie - 1972, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
The husband and wife Ludva and Hedus Homolkas with their twins Péta and Máta and Ludva's parents - the granny and grandpa - arrive in the snowy Spindleruv Mlýn for a holiday. They promise to each other that they will not spoil the quite expensive holiday by quarrels. If somebody hurts the other one he/she will kneel as a punishment.
Movie - 1977, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
It doesn't help to have an exacerbated situation like a family losing their only son - killed in a motorcycle accident. His parents, however, don't know the girl who survived, now being treated at a local hospital. Especially the honest and principled father, presented as a model worker and responsible official, cannot come to terms with her superficiality and carelessness, with her dubious life values...
Movie - 1979, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
The mischievous princess Anka annoys her father and her surroundings with her original tricks. So as punishment, the devil Haramáš takes her to the robbers and she makes their pleasant life of robbery literally hell on earth. How the devils would like to return her to her royal parents now! But Anka decides that she must be properly freed from captivity. She gets a dragon and a prince and organizes a big liberation performance...
Movie - 1977, 2h 15m • as vrátný
The heroes of this absurd comedy, full of confusion and humor are Dzharda Zemanek and Frantisek Liska.
Movie - 1971, 2h 15m • as majitel psa
The Homolka family celebrates a great occasion: they were finally able to buy a car. They immediately begin to drive for small trips to Hradcany, to the airport, and plan further trips. Their euphoria is spoiled by a letter from their great-grandmother. Their great-grandfather is dying and the family is expected to come along to say goodbye. The annoyed Homolkas therefore set off to the South Bohemian village where the grandparents live.
Movie - 1981, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
A loose sequel to the 1976 comedy Stormy Wine. The screenwriters and the director recreate on screen a number of characters from the South Moravian town of Pálavice, characterised by their different attitudes and approaches to work and private life. A number of serious issues touching on the times emerge around the story of the con man. The fundamental dispute between the vice-chairman Janák and the chairman of the merged cooperatives ing. Urban, as well as the satirical theme of illegal machinations and bribes, are undoubtedly of general validity.
Movie - 1975, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
Set in the early 1930s, a young man finds a job as a dishwasher in a hotel and quickly works his way up the ladder. Loosely based on the novel by Henryk Worcell.
Movie - 1977, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
On 20th of April 1945 the Soviet army launches its attack on Berlin. The end has come for Nazi Germany and Hitler decides to commit suicide. In Prague K.H. Frank (Nazi Secretary of State and Chief of police in the Protectorate of Bohemia a Moravia) discusses with his commanders how to transform the city into an impregnable fortress, but the Praguers do not intend to wait any longer. From the early hours of 4th of May people start assembling in the streets and tearing down German signs. On the next day, the 5th of May, the uprising begins.
Movie - 1976, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
The 19-year-old volleyball player has been bedridden for a long time due to a spinal injury. The self-confident and energetic girl has time to recap her life and short sporting career so far...
Movie - 1971, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
In modern hospitals are carried out intensive cardiac surgery. Daily operations individually comments attendant Cajthaml ... Stylized ,, dream "scene are combined with documentary footage of actual operations, which were filmed at the University Hospital in Hradec Králové. The unique cinematic experiment theater and TV director after only a few years remind viewers.
Movie - 1983, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
The popular Moravanka brass band performs at the fair. Vasek Pivoňka, the bandleader of the local brass band Kulatěnky, which broke up, decides to put the band back together. The village musicians are sceptical at first, but later they start rehearsing with vigour. Standa, a Prague resident who is working in a pig farm to cure his nerves, helps them to organise the concert. He really likes Evica Kocourková, but her father keeps an eye on her. Young Šišák tries to charm the teacher Olina. Before the performance can begin, the band must succeed before the cultural committee. However, they fail to do so. The disappointed musicians play for themselves at the station and suddenly they are successful. Standa comes up with an idea how to push Kulatěnka through without the permission of the commission. A concert of Moravanka is being prepared in nearby Nechvalin.
Movie - 1970, 2h 15m • as Man in window
This light comedy finds a Czech taxi driver taking his family on a weekend outing in the country. His wife, daughter-in-law, son and two grandchildren are the passengers who disturb the solitude of two young lovers. While the women attend the horse races, the father sits home getting drunk and watching football. The overweight daughter-in-law is upset because she has blown her chances to become a ballerina. All members of the family are caught up in their own individual problems in this realistically portrayed family comedy
Movie - 1988, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
The drama called I Love, You Love was made in 1980 but because of the absurd ideological ban, the film entered cinemas nine years later. Pišta is an unmarried man who works at a freight wagon which carries letters and parcels. Alcohol helps him to overcome his handicap of being short and not good-looking. He wishes he had a woman, but the woman he really wants, ageing Viera who reloads the cargoes, has a soft spot for another man. So, Pišta has nobody and nothing, except for senile mother who sometimes fails to recognize him. The film received Silver Bear for Best Director at the International Film Festival in Berlin.
Movie - 1973, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
Radek Simek, the driver of a postal car, is shot dead on his regular route. The Investigators give up initial suspicions of robbery, because he carried no greater amount of money. Even questioning Honza Marek, another mail car driver, brings no result. When the circumstances are becoming more and more suspicious. Marek decides to track down the killer on his own.
Movie - 1990, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
When a person wants to breed racehorses, it's not just a job. You have to literally commit yourself to it. The unnecessarily overcomplicated action story has educational tendencies, as it is mainly aimed at young people - and they need positive role models.
Movie - 1973, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
A broadly drawn ideological epic set in the summer of 1947 in the borderlands of northern Bohemia: reactionary elements plot to undermine postwar social change while committed local communists struggle to organize workers and defend the emerging order. The narrative follows several archetypal figures—steadfast party activists, wary peasants, and obstructive reactionaries—whose clashes illustrate the claimed inevitability of working-class victory under communist leadership.
Movie - 1978, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
February 1948. The struggle of decisive social forces for the heart of Europe.
Movie - 1987, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
The Slippers of Happiness is another film made by the Slovak Film Production in co-production with West German companies based on classic world fairy tales. After Slovak folk tales [The Greatest Peck in the World, Salt Over Gold] and the works of German fairy tale writers Wilhelm Hauff [The False Prince] and the Brothers Grimm [The Land of the Thrush's Beard, Perinbaba], screenwriter Alex Koenigsmark and director Juraj Herz were inspired by the famous fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen. It tells the story of slippers that the Fairy of Fortune enchanted so that they would fulfill every human wish and thus bring people happiness. The filmmakers humorously transferred the plot from Copenhagen to old Prague.
Movie - 1981, 2h 15m • as Šedivý
Carefree young nurse Marta learns upon her husband's death that he was involved in all manner of criminal activity, which puts her life in danger.
Movie - 1981, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
Autumn 1944. A doctor is accused in the collaboration with the Nazis and found guilty...
Movie - 1951, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
Despite her father's protests, Vlasta Tomešová wants to become a tractor driver. However, before her first plowing, she falls in love and has to face the pitfalls of a rich farmer who does not want to join the cooperative.
Movie - 1976, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
A quarrel between divorced waitress Mája and her fifteen-year-old son Petr ends with the boy physically attacking his mother, and he is sent to an institution for juvenile delinquents.
Movie - 1975, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
In the era of normalisation, a number of (pseudo)historical films were made, even described as reconstructions, which glorified the world-building mission of the Communist Party and attributed to it exclusively humanitarian intentions ("Days of Betrayal", "Sokolovo", "Liberation of Prague", "The Victorious People"). In 1929, when its fifth congress met, Klement Gottwald, who had taken the line of the Russian Bolsheviks, took over the leadership of the Communists...
Movie - 1986, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
A communist journalist from Prague is sent to Ravensbruck concentration camp.
Movie - 1979, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
After many decades in Germany, Marie Hahn will come to Prague to meet her relatives and friends. She learns unflattering information about her husband's behaviour during the German occupation, she suffers health problems, but even her daughter is not interested in helping her mother...
Movie - 1978, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
Police discover Eva Nejtková dead in her apartment and her husband Zdeněk unconscious from a shotgun wound. Captain Hora leads the investigation, noting that the killer struck Eva fatally and shattered her large aquarium, yet carefully transferred the goldfish into a smaller tank. Initial suspicion falls on Zdeněk’s apparent suicide attempt, but financial records and the absence of drugs at the scene shift focus. Detectives trace psychotropic medication supplies to Eva’s dealings with local addicts. As they question these “práškaři,” they uncover a network of illicit sales and potential motives tied to debts and blackmail. Clues from the supplier’s arrest and addicts’ testimonies gradually reveal whether Eva’s murder was linked to her clandestine drug trade or if a more personal betrayal lies at the heart of the crime.
Movie - 1989, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
The Spanish king marries the beautiful, clever and poor Charlotte, who is jealous not only of himself but especially of his mother, who has had him all to herself until then. She takes advantage of his jealousy and gets the king to have the young "queen" imprisoned. Charlotte manages to escape to England, where she accidentally meets her rich uncle Lord Spencer. Thanks to him, she achieves justice and manages to regain the king's love and trust.
Movie - 1980, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
A young engineer, Štěpán Pavlík, dreams of becoming a cosmonaut.
Movie - 1976, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
The town is waking up. The bus driver Josef Král is saying goodbye to his wife Vera who is in a state of advanced pregnancy. At the rolling mill, the master craftsman Mares is preparing for retirement, which is now only two days away. Elderly Simon who grows and sells vegetables at the market has problems with his wife. Their little home has to give way to a new development but the wife Simonka refuses to move out. The chairman of the workers' council has troubles with the miner Adam, who has started drinking. He doesn't know that Adam is getting divorced and fears he may lose his young son to his wife.
Movie - 1975, 2h 15m • as Police Officer (segment "Rukojmí")
A short story film depicting the three different faces of crime. In the short story "The Weekend", Karas kills a woman he raped some time ago in order to silence her. However, he accidentally kills another woman. In "Hostages", a drug addict, Chaban, terrorizes the hospital's operating team, but the disciplined doctors handle the difficult situation. In "The Pickpocket", the thief Benda wants to return to his trade immediately after his release, but his attempt ends tragically.
Movie - 1978, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
The drama of a man for whom work has become the only meaning of life. His cold and impersonal manner arouses the disapproval of his colleagues and family members and leads to alienation. Eventually, he realizes the need for "time out" to reflect on his own life...