Tisícročná včela (1983)

The film follows the lives of three generations of the Pichanda family, a family of masons in a small Slovak village, over a period of thirty years (1887–1917). At the beginning of the 20th century, before his death, Martin Pichanda—a farmer, beekeeper, and seasonal mason—passed on an unconventional wisdom about the world to his two sons and daughter: everywhere, even in the most ordinary and wretched life, one must seek one’s freedom and meaning in life. Such a message resonated with particular force in the totalitarian reality of the early 1980s. The three siblings and their descendants then follow different paths, though they continue to live close to one another. Kristína is torn between her husband and an old love. After she is widowed, she begins living in a ménage à trois with her lover and his wife, and later gives birth to a child for all three of them. Valentín becomes a successful lawyer, which his pro-Communist brother Samuel, a miller, regards with resentment and suspicion. The rift between the brothers deepens when the wealthier Valentín refuses to give up his share of the inheritance. As the decades and generations pass, ethnic and social tensions in the Pichandas’ homeland within the Habsburg Empire grow more intense. Samuel loses his eldest son in a police action against left-wing demonstrators and, during the First World War, loses his second son as well, a talented painter. As a result, he turns to terrorism, with far-reaching consequences for himself and others.