Gros film tchèque qui sort dans quelques jours dans son pays d'origine. J'adore le poster, et le film me tente bien (reste à savoir si un cinéma le programmera avec des sous-titres anglais).
A stirring drama that follows the tragic fate of a mother and later that of her daughter during the fateful flow of history in Europe from the beginning of the Second World War until the year 1961.
The story begins in the early days of the war with a love story between Arno von Lieven, a Baltic aristocrat, and Helga, a Czech girl who is a member of a German hospital staff in the Sudetenland. Arno had fled from the Soviet threat and took part in the Finnish war as a volunteer. He fought against the Russians alongside his Finnish comrades and is injured in one of the battles. Saved as if by miracle, he is brought to the German hospital where Helga is working. Helga helps him back to life. They fall in love but their short love story has a tragic end with Arno's voluntary death. However, a new life is to be born from their love.
After the war Helga and her daughter Dorli are persecuted and finally moved out of their homeland. They find refuge with a former owner of a sanatorium, a Jew who survived concentration camp and lost all his family. He provides them with a safe, modest living for a while. But fate is merciless.
Dorli is a teenager when, together with her Greek friend, she tries to escape to the Baltic to find her father's family. Their attempt fails. Dorli is imprisoned and Helga, who would give her all for her child's freedom, gives herself up to the mercies of the police. In order to save her mother who is now dying in prison, Dorli is forced to collaborate with the communist secret police, who are primarily interested in her inheritance in Germany, stemming from the family of her deceased father. Helga dies after being released from prison.
Dorli leaves Czechoslovakia, she leaves Europe and settles in Belgian Congo. But even here her fate overtakes her.
