A film depicting the grim reality of the communist regime and its totalitarian and criminal methods, which persisted even during the period of normalization. The story of Catholic seminarians who are pressured to submit to and collaborate with a pathological regime that, once again, labeled itself “people’s democratic.”

Michal and Juraj are young men living the lives of young seminarians. Their studies are disrupted by the toxic atmosphere of a secular ideology that usurps the right to interfere even in the life of the Church.

Refusal to cooperate with the state-run Association of Catholic Clergy, Pacem in Terris, is in certain cases of disobedience even punishable by death. Surveillance by the State Security is a daily occurrence, and anonymous resistance to collaboration with the communist regime is followed by terror and interrogations.

The film conveys a message about what a vile and repulsive evil the secular communist dictatorship was. It reveals how a person in the service of an atheist regime was degraded to the level of an animal.

Drama

Slovakia / Czech Republic / Romania / Ireland, 2020, 88 min (alternative 78 min)

Crew: Ivan Ostrochovský;

Cast: Samuel Skyva, Samuel Polakovič, Vlad Ivanov, Vladimír Strnisko, Milan Mikulčík, Tomáš Turek, Vladimír Zboroň, Martin Šulík, Vladimír Obšil, Zvonko Lakčevič;

Parents’ Guide

A prolonged shot of a naked young man, showing his bare buttocks as he is being drafted into the army.

A depiction of a priest being tortured. One instance of a State Security officer slapping or striking a seminarian during an interrogation. Two instances of a dead body being found or shown on a bed with a pool of blood beneath it.

Although this was a time when awareness of the dangers of smoking was still in its early stages, smoking appears far too frequently in the film—including among seminarians and clergy—which comes across as a bit of a directorial misstep. Frequent scenes of drinking hard liquor.

A dead body next to a car.

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