Unser letzter Sommer

Seventeen-year-old Romek is a stoker and would love nothing more than to be a locomotive driver. In the woodlands Jewish refugees attempt to survive. Guido is seventeen and has been transferred to Poland for disciplinary reasons. Both of them fall in love with sixteen-year-old Franka. Does the general wartime preoccupation with saving one's skin afford room to humanist ideals however? Michal Rogalski's feature film début, which impresses with its complex character-painting, is a visually-impressive narrative on the fatality of war and the end of innocence. JT