Jiri Menzel, a Czech director whose 1966 movie "Closely Watched Trains" won the Academy Award for the best foreign language film has died. He was 82.
Menzel's wife, Olga, announced his death late Sunday, saying he died the previous day. No details were given. Three years ago, Menzel underwent a brain operation and was kept in an artificially induced coma for several weeks after it.
"Dearest Jirka, I thank you for each and every day I could spend with you. Each was extraordinary," his wife said on Facebook.
Menzel made some 20 movies and was one of the leading filmmakers of the new wave of Czechoslovak cinema that appeared in the 1960s. His movies represented a radical departure from socialist realism, a typical communist-era genre focusing on realistically depicting the struggles of the working class.
Unlike colleagues such as Milos Forman, Jan Nemec and Ivan Passer, Menzel didn't emigrate after the 1968 Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia.
"Closely Watched Trains" was his first feature movie. Based on a novel by Czech author Bohumil Hrabal, it tells the story of a dispatcher's apprentice coming of age at a small train station during the Nazi occupation in World War II.
His next collaboration with Hrabal, "Larks on a String" in 1969 was another tragicomic description of life under a totalitarian regime, this time under communism.
The movie was immediately banned by the communist authorities. After the 1989 anti-Communist revolution led by Vaclav Havel, it won the Golden Bear award at the Berlin international film festival.
Menzel's other adaptation of Hrabal's work include "Cutting It Short" (1980), "The Snowdrop Festival" (1984) and "I served the King of England" (2006).
His 1985 comedy "My Sweet Little Village" was nominated for the Academy Award for best foreign film.
A graduate of Prague's Academy of Performing Arts in 1962, he was also known for directing plays and also as an actor.
Among other awards, Menzel received the French Order of Arts and Literature.
South Korea fines Meta $15 million for illegally collecting information on Facebook users
South Korea's privacy watchdog on Tuesday fined social media company Meta 21.6 billion won ($15 million) for illegally collecting sensitive personal information from Facebook users, including data about their political views and sexual orientation, and sharing it with thousands of advertisers.
It was the latest in a series of penalties against Meta by South Korean authorities in recent years as they increase their scrutiny of how the company, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, handles private information.
Following a four-year investigation, South Korea's Personal Information Protection Commission concluded that Meta unlawfully collected sensitive information about around 980,000 Facebook users, including their religion, political views and whether they were in same-sex unions, from July 2018 to March 2022.
It said the company shared the data with around 4,000 advertisers.
South Korea's privacy law provides strict protection for information related to personal beliefs, political views and sexual behavior, and bars companies from processing or using such data without the specific consent of the person involved.
The commission said Meta amassed sensitive information by analyzing the pages the Facebook users liked or the advertisements they clicked on.
The company categorized ads to identify users interested in themes such as specific religions, same-sex and transgender issues, and issues related to North Korean escapees, said Lee Eun Jung, a director at the commission who led the investigation on Meta.
"While Meta collected this sensitive information and used it for individualized services, they made only vague mentions of this use in their data policy and did not obtain specific consent," Lee said.
Lee... Read More