The Firemen’s Ball

The hilarious comedy almost imprisoned its director for ten years but ended with his emigration, where he made many more great films (such as "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest").

One evening, Forman and his friends decided to have some fun and went to the local community center, where they stumbled upon a real ball organized by the local firefighters. Forman recalled that what he saw there was a true nightmare. To cope with it, his friends wrote a script, which Forman then turned into a film that became his last one made in his home country. Many saw it as a critique of the communist regime in socialist Czechoslovakia. Forman found himself in serious trouble and faced a possible 10-year prison sentence for causing economic damage to the state. The director was saved by producer Claude Berri and famous filmmaker Francois Truffaut, who bought the international distribution rights. Forman would go on to make his next film in the United States after emigrating.

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. The film was also selected for the 1968 Cannes Film Festival, which was ultimately canceled due to unrest in France.