Miloš Forman

Who is Miloš Forman?

Jan Tomáš Forman, known as Miloš Forman, is a Czech film director, screenwriter, and professor, who until 1968 lived and worked primarily in the former Czechoslovakia.

Forman was one of the most important directors of the Czechoslovak New Wave. His 1967 film The Fireman's Ball, on the surface a naturalistic representation of an ill-fated social event in a provincial town, was seen by both movie scholars and authorities in Czechoslovakia as a biting satire on Eastern European Communism, resulting in it being banned for many years in Forman's home country.

Since Forman left Czechoslovakia, two of his films, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Amadeus, have acquired particular renown, both gaining him an Academy Award for Best Director. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was the second to win all five major Academy Awards following It Happened One Night in 1934, an accomplishment not repeated until 1991 by The Silence of the Lambs. Forman was also nominated for a Best Director Oscar for The People vs. Larry Flynt. He has also won Golden Globe, Cannes, Berlinale, BAFTA, Cesar, David di Donatello, European Film Academy, and Czech Lion awards.