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News, Czech film Charlatan on shortlist for Best International Film in Academy Awards, new website celebrates legacy of Sir Nicholas Winton, Prague's Jewish Quarter

The Czech film Charlatan, a biographical drama about a controversial healer in communist-era Czechoslovakia, directed by Agnieszka Holland, has made the shortlist of 15 films in the running for Best International Film in this year’s Academy Awards. The final Oscar nominations are due to be announced in mid-March.

A freshly launched website celebrates the legacy of Sir Nicholas Winton, who in 1939 saved 669 mainly Jewish children from Czechoslovakia by helping them get to his native UK. The site showcases a wealth of material from the Sir Nicholas Winton Memorial Trust – and of course introduces visitors to his inspirational story. I discussed the website with his daughter, Barbara Winton.

ČTU students’ open-source balancing robot, Erasmus+ in the coronavirus era, fascinating book on a Prague Jewish family at the brink of WWII

The EU’s Erasmus+ is a popular study abroad programme which gives hundreds of thousands of students every year the opportunity to study, or gain work experience in another EU member state. The programme is also very popular among Czech students, with more than 21,000 taking part in Erasmus+ during 2019. However, with the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, many of them have had to switch to an online study format, despite still being able to travel abroad, says Radka Vavroušková from the Czech National Agency for International Education and Research, the organisation that administers Erasmus+ in Czechia.

Graduate students at the Czech Technical University in Prague have developed a balancing robot, which they dubbed “SK8O” (Skate-O). Thanks to its relatively low price (50,000 Czech crowns) and open-source design, the device can be built in schools or by robotics enthusiasts.

News, EU vaccine strategy, Czech Film Critics’ Awards, Jakub Hlávka, a young Czech academic focused on health policy who’s building an impressive career in the US

An unprecedented joint procurement initiative led by Brussels to secure coronavirus vaccines and make them equally available to all 27 EU member states has fallen well short of the mark. To date, just over 3 percent of the bloc’s population of 450 million has received a Covid-19 vaccination. Not only did the EU rollout begin notably later than in post-Brexit Britain and the United States, supplies have failed to arrive as contracted. How did it go so wrong?

Director Bohdan Sláma’s Shadow Country (Krajina ve stínu) won the 2020 annual Czech Film Critics’ Awards on Saturday. The black and white film which depicts life in a Czech border village during the most tumultuous period in twentieth century history also received an award in the best female actress category. Ivan Trojan, who played the role of healer Jan Mikolášek in Agnieszka Holland’s Charlatan (Šarlatán), took the award for best male actor.

The young US-based Czech academic Jakub Hlávka is an expert on health policy, working on government projects focused on the Covid pandemic as well as studying the treatment of Alzheimer’s Disease. But as we shall hear, the high-flyer also has experience in a remarkably broad range of other fields. I spoke to Hlávka, who is 30, from his home in California.