Oscar-winning director Jiří Menzel dies at 82

The Oscar-winning Czech film director Jiří Menzel has died at the age of 82 after a long illness. His wife Olga Menzelová posted the news on Facebook late on Sunday.

Menzel won an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1967 with "Closely Watched Trains", a World War II drama based on a novel by the Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal.

Born on 23 February 1938, Menzel studied film direction at Prague’s Film and TV School of Performing Arts FAMU. In the 1960s he became one of the leading figures of the Czech New Wave, alongside directors such as Miloš Forman or Věra Chytilová.

His collaboration with Hrabal, which included "Cutting It Short" and "Larks on a String" proved to be one of the major hallmarks of his career. The latter, considered by many his masterpiece, was banned by the Communists and only released after the fall of communism in 1989.

Menzel, who continued to make films into the new millennium, won a number of awards, including a Czech Lion for lifetime artistic contribution and a Medal of Merit, the French Order of Arts and Literature.