A child learns war isn't a game when the front comes home.
Village boy Klimko, accompanying his father to the front, stays with his stepmother. In the occupied village, the hero cannot see his friends. Having survived hunger, injuries and loneliness, the boy enters a vocational school - nine kilometers from the village - and works with new friends for the front...
Acting
Pisunov's silence speaks louder than dialogue.
Cinematography
Bleached Ukrainian landscapes as emotional prison.
Director
Mykola Vinhranovskyi
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Vinhranovskyi was primarily a poet; this, his directorial debut, treats images as verses—sparse, weighted, unsentimental.
Shot during renewed Cold War tensions, the film's quiet humanism was read by some as subtle critique of glorified war narratives.
SU
