Five

Miroslav Balajka’s directing debut came in 1985 with this film produced at Film Studios Gottwaldov. It came along as the next film in an extensive 1980s list of Czechoslovak films made for children and young people. In Pětka s hvězdičkou (The Five), Jan Hartl plays young teacher Petr Mikeš, who is starting his job at an elementary school in Čejkovice, south Moravia. There is a quintet of close friends among Mikeš’s seventh-graders, rascals who never cease to amaze the good-natured teachers with their antics. But the mischievous boys also succeed in clearing the teacher of an unjust accusation… The film amounts to a light entertainment that fulfils the era’s idealised image of the sunny south Moravian countryside where the locals have nothing more serious to deal with than the efforts of a bachelor teacher in search of a suitable bride. Other points of interest are the “politically correct” inclusion of Štefan, the Roma member of the fivesome, and the fact that the only real threat in the vicinity is the village drunkard.