Closely Watched Trains

Closely Watched Trains, released in Czech as Ostře sledovane vlaky, is a 1966 Czechoslovak coming-of-age comedy directed by Jiri Menzel in his feature debut, adapted from Bohumil Hrabal's 1965 novella of the same name and produced by Barrandov Studios. Set at a small railway station in German-occupied Czechoslovakia near the end of the Second World War, it follows apprentice dispatcher Milos Hrma as his personal and romantic struggles intertwine with his growing involvement in a resistance plot to sabotage a German ammunition train. The film won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 1968 ceremony and the Grand Prize at the Mannheim-Heidelberg festival, and it is regarded as one of the defining works of the Czechoslovak New Wave.