Beginning of a Long Autumn

In 1989, Slovak director Petr Hledík was working on a screenplay about a group of children who come across a statue of Czechoslovakia’s first president Tomáš Masaryk in an old well, having been thrown in there by local communists in 1948. However, the developing events of the Velvet Revolution brought new inspiration to Hledík’s tale as he began to include their echo in the emerging material. Začátek dlouhého podzimu (The Beginning of a Long Autumn, 1990) thus begins as an adventure story for children but soon turns into a somewhat naïve and optimistic narration. The heroine, little Johanka, moves to the countryside with her mother but finds the relocation is not good for her asthma. The children’s discovery of the Masaryk statue stirs old tensions among the villagers but then November 1989 comes along and everybody is free to breathe again… Rudolf Hrušínský and Hungarian actor Gábor Hársányi both excel in this children’s film, which was soon forgotten after its premiere.