The Painted Bird
Short description
The Painted Bird follows a young Jewish boy in Eastern Europe during World War II. His parents, fearing persecution, place him in the care of an older woman in a remote rural area. When she dies, the boy is left to survive on his own, moving between villages and farms where the local peasants treat him with suspicion and cruelty. He witnesses the violence of both German and Soviet soldiers as the war sweeps through the region, and by the time it ends he has been changed permanently.
Václav Marhoul wrote, directed and produced the film, adapting it from Jerzy Kosinski's novel. It is his second feature as director, following his 2019 debut. The cast includes Petr Kotlár as the boy, alongside Nina Šunevič as Marta, Alla Sokolova as Olga, Udo Kier as Miller, Michaela Doležalová as Miller's Wife and Stellan Skarsgård as Hans. Shot in black and white, the production was made across Ukraine, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, with a budget of 8 million dollars.
On IMDb, the film holds a rating of 7.3 from over seven thousand votes, and on TMDB it sits at 7.1 from a smaller number of votes. A critics' rating of 7.4 from 110 reviews places it slightly above both audience scores. Running 169 minutes, the film spans drama, horror, thriller and war.
What's left behind the scenes
- During the film's premiere at the Venice Film Festival in 2019, many viewers got up from their seats and simply left the auditorium, which immediately brought the film notoriety. A journalist from The Guardian subsequently wrote that at least 12 viewers unsuccessfully tried to leave the auditorium, but the doors were locked, and sarcastically added that he would like to see a film about the audience’s reaction to “The Painted Bird”.
- The film is dubbed in what is known as "Inter-Slavic" – a mixture of several Slavic languages, including Russian, Polish, and Ukrainian.
- It took director Václav Marhoul 10 years to find funding. Stellan Skarsgård, who had previously been acquainted with Marhoul, was the first to agree to participate in the project. Understanding the difficult financial situation of the filmmakers, Skarsgård requested only 100 euros or $120 as his fee.
- The source novel, “The Painted Bird” (1965) by Jerzy Kosinski (1933-1991), was considered quite controversial in the author’s homeland and was even banned for a long time. It was banned when it became clear that the novel was not autobiographical, as the author had initially claimed, and that many of the brutal moments in the narrative, concerning the behavior of Polish peasants, were simply fabricated. Later it became known that Kosinski had added numerous instances from the lives of other people to the novel, including his friend Roman Polanski. And although neither the novel nor the film states that it takes place in Poland (they don't even speak Polish), 16 Polish production companies refused to work on the film; furthermore, Polish distributors also refused to work with it.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
