At' zije Republika (1965)

Czechoslovakia, toward the end of the Second World War: The film recounts the experiences of a 12-year-old boy from a Bohemian village during the turbulent period between the departure of the German soldiers and the arrival of the Russian troops. The events that unfold are insignificant, yet in the child’s mind they take on ghostly proportions. The teasing of his peers and his father’s harshness, alongside his mother’s tenderness and his friendship with an outsider—above all, the adults’ dishonesty and cruelty—are what make up little Oldřich’s world. One day, the village children are sent into hiding with all the horse-drawn carts because there is a rumor that the German occupation forces will requisition the horses. Deserters steal Oldřich’s horse and beat the boy, who no longer dares go home without his precious possession. He now wanders through no-man’s-land and comes across Soviet soldiers, from whom he in turn tries to steal a replacement horse. He befriends a Russian lieutenant, whose death he soon witnesses but cannot understand. When the war ends and Oldřich returns to his home village, the most decent resident of the place is singled out by the enraged crowd and driven to his death as a “collaborator.” And when Oldřich tries to return to his parents, he has to watch them shut themselves away and begin greedily searching through the stolen belongings of fleeing farmers.