"It's wrong no matter why you kill, no matter whom you kill and no matter who does the killing."

I've mentioned it before, but my senior year of college, I took a gen-ed class called "Eastern European Film in a Social Context" in which we watched many films, all dating from 1918 (the Russian revolution) to the mid-nineties (Balkan wars). Lately, as I've been traveling around Eastern Europe, it's made me think of a lot of these movies and today I went on a hunt to find all the titles. I want to share them with you in the hopes that maybe you'll watch a few of them.

Before the Rain – Baltic, Macedonia

No Man's Land – Baltic, Serbia/Bosnia

Ivan's Childhood - Russian

Kolya - Czechoslovakia

Brother - Russian

Burnt By The Sun - Russian

Closely Watched Trains – Czechoslovakia

Daisies – Czechoslovakia

Knife in the Water – Poland

The Mother – Russia

Potemkin – Russian

Tito and Me – Yugoslavia

Children of Glory – Hungarian

4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days – Romania

A Short Film About Killing – Poland

Man of Marble – Poland

Alice - Czechoslovakia

They're all in their native languages with English subtitles if you can find them (my University library has a lot of them so they're out there - even a few are online as I had to watch them there for class).

Which ones do I recommend? You should be aware that several of these could be very triggering in the violence/gore category, and of course, it does help the know the social context before watching. Still, there's no excuse not to watch these. 

Those I don't recommend for the squeamish (but are really excellent films due to this) are "4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days" as it pertains to abortion and there's a rather gruesome shot near the end of a fetus. Also, "A Short Film About Killing" is, as the title indicates, a short film about killing and is rumored to have the longest death scene of any film ever made (7 minutes and you see it all), but it's a great social commentary on death. Note: at one point, the entire class of 200 people gasped in sync it was that ... shocking, I guess I could say.

Aside from those two, I'd recommend "Closely Watched Trains," "Tito and Me," "Brother," and "No Man's Land." Those were some of my favorites. 

As I wandered around Budapest today, I thought to myself (much as I had when I went to Prague), that when I was born, no one even dreamed of going to Hungary. Nobody could. The Soviet Block was still intact and Eastern Europe was closed. Today, I went to the House of Terror, former home to the secret police of Hungary and location of brutal actions (it's now a museum dedicated to this fact including the prisons in the basement where people were kept and tortured, and one very poignant room in which there stands a singular pillar with a noose at the top). Just twenty years ago, Budapest was under this constant threat and in certain places, you can still see the bullet holes from the 1956 Revolt that was quickly quelled by Soviet troops and thousands died. (watch "Children of Glory" if you'd like to know more).

Sometimes I still can't believe how recent our history is and how countries are still waging wars over insignificant differences (watch "No Man's Land" for that one).

I guess I'll just leave this list here and hope someone watches one of those movies. But don't watch "Potemkin" unless you enjoy silent movies.