Manages to make the mundane utterly transforming. Incredible peformance from Denis Lavant. Greatest needle drop in history. What’s not to love?

Not for the faint-hearted! An invitation to ‘come and see’ the brutalities of war through the ‘seen-too-much-too-young’ eyes of teenager Florya. Set in Belarus during WW2, this exquisitely shot film is unsurprisingly firmly in support of the local partisans (who, whoever, are not glorified) and is unsparing in its depiction of the atrocities and general evil of the invading German forces. Warning, some scenes are particularly harrowing, and will stay with you for a long time. A reminder of the insanity of war.

One of the Czech New Wave finest films. A haunting raw beautiful film told in black and white with minimal dialogue. The film follows two boys who escape from a train going to a Nazi camp and have to survive hunger and the elements as they venture through a war-torn wooded landscape.

The cinematography and direction is exceptional and hallucinatory, and the viewer feels they are immersed deep into the boys’ traumatized minds and into the sodden unforgiving forest floor.