Czech Marked

In the Academy Award-winning Kolya, the Sveráks helped cut Czech filmmaking loose from its old Soviet shackles with a subtle social fable about a skirt-chasing Prague musician who, against his will, finds himself beguiled by a Russian orphan boy. In its scathing look at a postwar prison, Dark Blue World is more overtly political but just as emotional. Let's hope it signals a completely liberated future for films from Czechoslovakia and Eastern Europe.