Oliver Twist

Roman Polanski, who was awarded an Oscar for directing The Pianist (2002), decided to bring to life Charles Dickens’s orphan Oliver Twist. He filmed the story in Prague, Barrandov, around Beroun and Žatec. The film budgeted $50 million, and thus turned the touristy Prague into a 19th century England. Oliver is dissatisfied with his life in the orphanage, and runs away to London, where he joins a children’s gang of pickpockets. Polanski is not attracted as much by the social aspect of the story, as by its humor and dynamics.