News

Only a fifth of the Czech Republic’s railway stations and stops are at least partly wheelchair accessible, the country’s ombudswoman, Anna Šabatová, says. Speaking at a news conference, she said there was no legal mechanism for forcing transport companies to make their services more suitable for wheelchair users.

Ms. Šabatová told reporters that the only legislation in this area rules that all train wagons produced after 2008 must be wheelchair accessible.

The Inspection Committee of the Czech lower house has asked the ministries of regional development and agriculture to supply it with translations of European Commission audits relating to Prime Minister Andrej Babiš’s alleged conflict of interest. The as yet unpublished documents reportedly accuse Mr. Babiš of remaining in control of the company Agrofert despite having placed it in trust funds. However, the PM says he has complied with both Czech and European law.

The lower house committee has called on the ministries to hand the audits over without delay.

The authorities in the Czech capital will no longer provide funding to the Prague Writers’ Festival, the news site Aktuálně.cz reported. The literary event, which should take place for the 30th time in 2020, was not included in a list of organisations set to receive grants from the City of Prague next year.

A commission looking at funding applications said that the Prague Writers’ Festival did not have resonance in the media or among the public commensurate to the amount it received. In the past the city’s authorities contributed millions to the festival every year but the figure fell to around CZK 1 million annually.

Czech film director Václav Marhoul’s epic The Painted Bird has made the Oscars shortlist for Best International Feature Film. Ninety-one films were eligible in the category, and 10 will advance to the next round of voting.

Marhoul’s three-hour-long, black-and-white film is based on the 1965 novel by Polish-born author Jerzy Kosiński about a dark-skinned boy subject to all manner of abuse during WWII.

The Painted Bird was the first Czech film in competition at the Venice International Film Festival in a quarter century. It has also been nominated by the International Press Academy for a Satellite Award.

The other shortlisted films in the international feature category are Truth and Justice (Estonia), Les Misérables (France), Those Who Remained (Hungary), Honeyland (North Macedonia), Corpus Christi (Poland), Beanpole (Russia), Atlantics (Senegal), Parasite (South Korea), and Pain and Glory (Spain).

In the animated short film category, a film by Daria Kashcheeva, a student of Prague's FAMU born in Tajikistan, was also shortlisted. The Oscar nominations themselves, five in each category, will be announced on 13 January.