2024-08-28 05:19:28
Director and writer Jiří Hanibal died this Thursday in Prague after a short, serious illness. He was 95 years old. In 1967, the film Dědeček, Kyliján a ja, which he directed and co-wrote with the author of the book, Jan Ryska, won several international awards.
In addition to works for children and young people, Jiří Hanibal wrote two dozen novels. His daughter Jana Šedivá Hanibalová informed about his death on Friday. “The farewell will take place only in a close family circle,” she said.
Hannibal’s film Grandpa, Kyliján and I tells the story of a five-year-old boy whose parents go to London for two months on business. They put the boy with a neighbor, but he runs away from her to be with his grandfather, a former ferryman.
David Schneider and Rudolf Deyl Jr. in the film Grandfather, Kyliján and I. | Photo: Central Film Rental
The boy spends a magical vacation with an elderly man who lives by the water with a dog and a donkey. However, no idyll lasts forever. Hanibal won the Youth Jury Award or Screenplay Award at the Children’s Film Festival in Gijón, Spain, as well as the Golden Lion of St. Mark at the children’s cinema show in Venice.
Among his other well-known films were Carp, The Great Tribulation, Valley of the Beautiful Frogs, Don’t Look, the Horse is Following Us or Left Wing. After leaving the film studio Barrandov, Jiří Hanibal devoted himself to literature. He wrote more than 20 novels, both historical such as The King’s Lot, The King and the Emperor or Long Night Over the City, and focused on the recent past and present, which was the case with the titles With the Seal of Guilt or Death Alley.
Hanibal was born on February 18, 1929. After studying at the real gymnasium in his birthplace, Táboře, he studied directing at the FAMU in Prague between 1948 and 1953. Until 1959, he also worked there as an assistant professor. In the 1950s, he worked as an assistant director or assistant director with Martin Frič, Vojtěch Jasný and Karel Kachyňa. From 1960 he worked at the Barrandov Film Studio, where he made 25 feature films until 1989.