Konec srpna v Hotelu Ozon

The countdown, which begins in Russian before switching to other languages, makes it easy to guess what has occurred: human civilisation has collapsed. An old woman reflects on the past, using a tree stump as a calendar. The young women she leads never had a chance to encounter the civilised world, and thus they have no concept of morals or conscience. Nevertheless they take it upon themselves to rescue mankind.

Visions of the end of days weren't exactly commonplace in socialist-era Czechoslovak cinema, not even in the liberal sixties, making this film from Jan Schmidt all the more remarkable. In fact the tale has a further unnerving element, to the extent that certain scenes were shot in the abandoned town of Doupov (or Duppau in German); abandoned that is after the forced expulsion of the local German population. Turned into an army training area in 1955, the town was later completely destroyed. An inscription on the wall of a local abandoned church reads “It has come to pass”, a comment that could equally be applied to this film's post-apocalyptic setting. CF