Zdenka Simandlova Biography

Film Director/Writer/Producer/Editor

Zdenka Simandlova was a competitive gymnast from the Czech Republic. Now a fulltime filmmaker, she now a full-time filmmaker, she lives and works in Sydney, Australia. Her film, Mercy, won a Golden Reel Award at the 2009 Nevada Film Festival and she is currently developing it into a feature film.

The film, composed of three self-contained episodes and acted by an ensemble cast from the Czech Republic has three, interlocking stories about the preset the lives of people in Czechoslovakia, in an era known as Normalization or Pragmatic socialism under the Communist regime.

Zdenka is also developing a script for her next film, DEMARCATIONS, a political feature thriller, set also during the Communist regime and has a saga quality. She plans to write, direct and shoot in Czech Republic yet another feature film that explores the events around the court trials of the rock band the Plastic People of the Universe and the subsequent formation of the Human Rights Movement lead by playwright Vaclav Havel. In addition to Mercy, Zdenka has two short films, Defect and Short, official selections in several international film festivals.