Prague’s Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts (FAMU) has been listed as one of the top 15 film schools globally by The Hollywood Reporter in the magazine’s August 14, 2024 edition. Known for its rich history as one of the oldest film schools in the world, as well as for its many award-winning graduates, FAMU has long garnered worldwide recognition.
The Hollywood Reporter lists FAMU alongside film schools such as the Beijing Film Academy in China, La Fémis in France, and the U.K.’s National Film and Television School. This latest list is unranked, but the publication listed FAMU as the number 4 film school globally in a similar list published a decade ago. While not specified, it can be assumed that the list is limited to film schools outside the United States.
“The Film and TV School of Academy of Performing Arts in Prague can say it inspired a cinema revolution. The Czechoslovak New Wave of the 1960s sprung mainly from such FAMU students as Miloš Forman, Věra Chytilová, Jiří Menzel and Jaromil Jireš, who created a new dark and funny take on life behind the Iron Curtain,” The Hollywood Reporter writes in its August 14 edition.
“A generation after the end of the Cold War, FAMU remains one of Europe’s top-tier film schools, offering one-year intensive programs and two- and three-year master’s degrees in directing, cinematography and editing, including accredited programs in English.”
FAMU was originally founded in the post-war years of 1946-48 alongside the Theatre Faculty (DAMU) and the Music and Dance Faculty (HAMU), as one of three branches of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. It is considered to be the fifth-oldest film school in the world after academies in Moscow, Berlin, Rome, and Paris.
During the late 1950s and 1960s, FAMU was instrumental in shaping the Czech New Wave, a cinematic movement that broke away from the constraints of traditional filmmaking under a communist regime. Most of the celebrated filmmakers from the Czech New Wave are FAMU alumni.
The school’s early graduates included world-renowned directors like Miloš Forman, who won directing Oscars for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Amadeus, and Věra Chytilová, celebrated for her avant-garde film Daisies. Acclaimed author Milan Kundera studied directing and screenwriting at FAMU, and would later lecture at the school in the area of literature.
Other notable FAMU alumni include Slovak filmmaker Juraj Jakubisko, Serbian director Emir Kusturica, and Polish director Agnieszka Holland. Holland, who would earn an Oscar nomination for her film Europa, Europa, formed a strong bond with the Czech capital while studying at FAMU, and has returned to Prague to shoot Czech productions like Burning Bush, Charlatan, and most recently, Franz.
Today, FAMU continues to uphold its reputation as one of the most prestigious film schools in Europe, with a focus on comprehensive training programs that are designed to meet the evolving demands of the film industry. While the majority of the school’s courses are in Czech, it also offers intensive summer and one-year courses in English, as well as two and three-year English-language master’s programs.
These are The Hollywood Reporter‘s top 15 film schools globally for 2024:
- Australian Film Television and Radio School (Australia)
- Beijing Film Academy (China)
- Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia (Italy)
- ECAM (Spain)
- ESCAC (Spain)
- FAMU Prague (Czech Republic)
- Gobelins, l’école de l’image (France)
- HFF Munich (Germany)
- La Fémis (France)
- Lodz Film School (Poland)
- National Film and Television School (UK)
- Toronto Film School (Canada)
- Vancouver Film School (Canada)
- Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand)
Lead photo: Lažanský Palace, seat of FAMU in Prague via Wikimedia Commons / Tilman2007
