The Valley of the Bees

Ondřej z Vlkova (Petr Čepek) is a boy cast out by his father and handed to the Teutonic Knights, where the strict monk Armin von Heide (Jan Kačer) raises him through years of hardship. After a wrongful punishment he flees the Order and walks home, only to find his father dead, his properties his to claim, and his former stepmother the woman he now means to marry. Vláčil films the road home and the quiet, withheld faces along it with a patient, melancholy beauty.