In the summer of 1945, the people of a small Japanese village find a Black American helicopter pilot in one of their traps and lock him in the communal storeroom. While the war continues and the villagers wait for orders from above, the man – for the townspeople, his presence, this allegory – becomes something else.

“Your keeping this animal has meant all of us suffer!”

飼育 shares more than a few themes with Đorđe Kadijević's Празник from 1967. The war's the same, any war is, and the Chetniks too capture a Black American pilot. Again, the villagers seem to share a folie, a madness, rooted in an unshaken belief – call it tradition or shared illusions foolishness or hope.

A car accident.

“That very night I found myself in totally different circumstances.”

– Don Roque Busqueros

The cyclical story of the Christ envisioned as an icon maker, the creator of sacred images of the saints and the Holy.

 

When you know what to look for – the significance of bread, the judgement of the Pantocrator, the wheel that begets martyrs – Иконостасът speaks the language of the people, not of the ecclesiastic.

A teacher, enthralled by one of his students, gets lost after she graduates.

“Fran.”

– Govert Miereveld

Heavy and light, absurd and profane. An absolute recommendation.

“Grand Hotel… always the same. People come, people go. Nothing ever happens.”

– Flaemmchen

“A single cannon is fired and a teacher's monthly salary goes up in smoke.”

– Z