Jiří Svoboda

Jiří Svoboda (born 5 May 1945 in Kladno) is a Czech film and TV director, screenwriter and retired politician. He was leader of the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSČM) from 1990 to 1993. In 2017 he received the World Prize for Humanism from the Macedonian-based Ohrid Academy of Humanism.

In 1996 Svoboda unsuccessfully ran for the Senate as an independent candidate for the Party of the Democratic Left. From 1999 to 2004 he was a professor of film art at Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (FAMU). As a journalist he also occasionally participates in historical debates about Czech history up until the Middle Ages. He holds atheist viewpoints.