Charlatan

Charlatan is a 2020 Czech-Polish-Irish-Slovak drama directed by Agnieszka Holland based loosely on the healer Jan Mikolášek (1889–1973), who cured hundreds of people using plant-based remedies. It was selected as the Czech entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 93rd Academy Awards making the February shortlist. It won five awards including Best Film at the 2021 Czech Lion Awards. Plot The life of , a well-known and successful Czech healer, who diagnosed and healed people using his intuition and his familiarity with plants. His remedies and prescriptions, although mostly plant-based, included lifestyle and dietary changes. He healed not only poor people from the villages but also many well-known people, including the Czechoslovak President, Antonín Zápotocký. Mikolášek's diagnostic methods and notorious healing got the attention of Czechoslovakia's government. He was finally arrested after strychnine was found in the bodies of two men he had treated. In real life, Jan Mikolášek was tried and convicted in 1959 of tax and other offenses, but not for murder by strychnine poisoning, was released in 1963, and died in 1973. Cast Ivan Trojan as Jan Mikolášek as Young Mikolášek as František as Johanka Jaroslava Pokorná as Mülbacherová Miroslav Hanuš as Investigator as Member of Secret Service Martin Myšička as Father Václav Kopta as the Judge Jan Budař as Bureaucrat as Fritz Kiesewetter