The Elementary School

Set in post-WWII Czechoslovakia, this charming coming-of-age picture starts raucously but wins over viewers once they're acclimated to director Jan Sverak's broad, sentimental style. A 1991 Oscar nominee for best foreign film (which Sverak's KOLYA won in 1996), THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL bears some of the humorous and political hallmarks of the golden age of Czech cinema, when Sverak's progenitors like Jiri Menzel, Milos Forman, and Jan Kadar reigned supreme.

At the tail end of WWII, impressionable Eda (Vaclav Jakoubek) and mischievous Tonda (Radoslav Budac) are best friends growing up in a suburb of Prague. Tonda often has to pull his gambling father out of pubs, bu...