Painted BirdPainted Bird

Somewhere in Eastern Europe during World War II, a Jewish boy is sent to a quiet town far from the life-threatening dangers of war. Once there, his guardian dies unexpectedly, and he is left alone to face the horrors of war again. Places such as ‘Auschwitz’ are symbolically imprinted in our conscious when thinking of Nazi Germany’s genocidal policies, but Czech-born director Václav Marhoul directs our gaze to Jewish villages in Eastern Europe instead. The gas chambers were not the only places where Jews were killed. Jews were also killed in more ordinary spaces, sometimes more slowly. Sometimes more painfully. The film’s disturbing scenes have led to walkouts from audiences at several film festivals, but it has also been praised for its cinematic touches reminiscent of Andrei Tarkovsky. It is an adaptation of Jerzy Kosiński’s 1965 autobiographical novel of the same name. The boy’s story is based on the author’s own childhood in which Kosiński was separated from his parents, transferred to an orphanage, and suffered from aphasia until he was eventually reunited with them. (LEE Jong-chan)

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