Cold War “king of Šumava” story brought to life in new film by Irish director

One of the highlights of this year’s Jihlava festival of documentary
films was the Czech premiere of Kings of Šumava, which combines real
interviews with animation to tell the gripping story of Josef Hasil. A
native of the mountain range, Hasil was a border guard turned cross-border
agent whose derring-do in smuggling defectors across the Iron Curtain led
Czechoslovakia’s secret police to list him as the “king of Šumava”
in their files.