Together with Ivan Jandl, the first holder of an Oscar and his classmate, they were interested in film already at the High School. He was growing up in the effervescent literary and theatrical milieu of the Prague bohemian circles of the sixties, at the film school FAMU, where he had studied dramaturgy, and was closest to the future film director Elo Havetta. To him, as well as to Juraj Jakubisko, Ivan Balaďa and Juraj Herz, he dedicated his imaginatively flared talent as a screen writer. He held a position of a head writer at the Koliba in Bratislava at the onset of the seventies before leaving for Barrandov. He was expelled from the Czechoslovak film after his signing of the Charter 77 and left for West Germany. At the present time he is a professor at the FAMU department of screenwriting and devotes himself to directing authorial documentaries.
