Němec and Jiří Menzel convinced the Barrandov Studios that a film made up of stories by the Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal, an underground novelist who had recently been allowed to publish after years of censorship and neglect, would be a commercial enterprise. They enlisted five other filmmakers to participate in what became a calling card of the Czechoslovak New Wave. Věra Chytilová, Jaromil Jireš, Evald Schorm, Menzel and Němec each chose a story and directed a segment. Němec’s, “The Imposters,” set in a hospital room inhabited by two sick old men, is even quicker and more to-the-point than his other work, concentrating on the stories the men tell each other about their younger selves. While their stories are revealed to be Hrabalian fabulations, Němec shuffles them off the stage with such dispatch that their fibs become poignant for the brief moment before oblivion swallows them up.