Václav Kadrnka is a Czech award-winning director, scriptwriter and a producer. After graduating from FAMU he directed and produced his feature debut Eighty Letters. Based on the true story of his family, this personal film reconstructed a single day in communist Czechoslovakia as experienced by a fourteen-year-old boy. After the premiere at Berlinale Forum in 2011, the film was screened at numerous world festivals and received several awards. His second film Little Crusader, premiered at Karlovy Vary IFF and won the Grand Prix Crystal Globe. His third film Saving One Who Was Dead was again inspired by actual events experienced by VK. When the father falls into a coma after suffering a stroke, the mother and the son are trying to bring him back. The film premiered in the main competition at IFF Karlovy Vary 2021 and received international acclaim.
VK very often looks for a personal footprint in each of his projects. The themes he likes to explore usually involve absence of a loved person, divided family or a dramatic situation within the family closely observed by one of its members. He likes to include moments of observation and subjective point of view. A gaze is a dominant element in his directing style. The characters in his films are often trapped in dramatic circumstances they cannot control, trying to find the way out.
Vaclav Kadrnka is also active in teaching film directing and elements of mise-en-scène at FAMU, Prague.
In 2023 together with other Czech and Slovak filmmakers he started to operate a film theatre Atlas cinema in Prague, focusing on arthouse and festival cinema.
He is married with three children. His wife Simona is his producer partner on all his films, and they run the Sirius Film and Sirius Film Manual production together in harmony.