Birds, Orphans and Fools

Synopsis

Shot immediately after the Soviet invasion of 1968, Jakubisko’s long-repressed feature focuses on the relationship that develops between two male friends and a female Jewish orphan as they travail a world ravaged by death and destruction, a war-torn landscape of bombed-out churches and wrecked homes occupied, it seems, only by themselves and birds. Their triangular relationship recalls Truffaut's Jules et Jim, but Jakubisko's heroes have no romantic ideals – they are all orphans, products of an absurd world in which their parents killed each other. With references from Shakespeare to Rabelais, key episodes in Slovak history – and recalling Věra Chytilová's Daisies – Jakubisko's exhilerating, experimental film is turn playful, surreal and increasingly nightmarish.

"This bizarre allegory about the possibilities of freedom is memorable by its unrestricted playfulness and a flamboyant disrespect towards national traditions" – Lidove Noviny