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The Elementary School
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The Elementary School

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type
Movie
language
Czech
duration
100 min
genre
comedy-drama
director
Jan Svěrák
Score
5 / 10

The Elementary School is a 1991 Czechoslovak comedy-drama film directed by Jan Svěrák. The screenplay comes from the pen of his father Zdeněk Svěrák. The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1991 and is considered to belong among the best Czechoslovak films ever. A prequel, Barefoot, was released in 2017.

Plot

Shortly after World War II, in 1945–46, in one of the suburbs of Prague (the film was shot in Michle), Eda Souček attends a boys' elementary school where he belongs to a class with a complete lack of discipline. After the class drives their teacher, Maxová, to a mental breakdown during one of her classes, the schoolmaster has to implement special measures. Authoritative Igor Hnízdo, who is said to be a great war hero, is hired as their new teacher. He immediately introduces corporal punishment, which, as he claims, is not normally allowed, but the school has received an exception from the Ministry of Education, especially for their class. Whenever he is not satisfied with the boys' behavior, Hnízdo asks them to flex their arms and hits their palms several times with a flexible switch.

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    More details

    author
    contentLocation Prague
    director Jan Svěrák
    editor Alois Fišárek
    genre comedy-drama
    keywords corporal punishment elementary school first time force great war high school girl mental breakdown michle military service sexual relationship surround switch war hero world war ii
    musicBy Jiří Svoboda
    nomination Academy Award for Best International Feature Film International Submission to the Academy Awards
    producer Jaromír Lukás
    productionCompany Barrandov Studios
    publisher Lucernafilm - Alfa