Rudolf Adler

Rudolf Adler (25 May 1941 – 10 November 2025) was a Czech film director, screenwriter and film educator.

Life and career Rudolf Adler studied film directing at the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, graduating in 1966. Concomitantly Adler wrote the libretto for composer Zdeněk Pololáník's ballet Mechanismus; their collaborative work premiered at the FX Šalda Theater, Liberec, in 1964.

At a time when Czechoslovakia's communist regime sought control of the arts, making it difficult if not impossible for the public to gain access to unofficial ideas and expressions, Adler, alongside colleagues Ivan Balaďa and Vladimír Drha, created subversive films. Some of their films qualify as avant-garde and/or auteur films, even though they were produced by Czechoslovak Army Film Studio.

He directed more than 100 films. Among them are Strepy pro Evu (1978), Chlapská dovolenka (1988), and the documentary Masks, Jesters, Demons (2002), in which he and cowriter Ludvík Baran examine historic, ritualistic uses of face masks in the Czech lands and throughout the world.

From the late 1980s, Adler taught documentary filmmaking at the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (FAMU), serving at different times in capacities of professor and department head (1990–1994).