That is a wonderful movie that breaks your heart. The story takes us in the last autumn before Germany invaded USSR. A group of high school kids with their eternal business of first love, classes, leaders and dreamers is suddenly thrown out of peaceful existence. A father of the most likable girl is taken by KGB and she has to renounce him publicly. She can not betray him and so she invites all her true friends (those who did not desert her for being a daughter of the enemy of the state) for a picnic. She does not say so, but t is a farewell. After that she takes an overdose of sleeping pills. In an unbelievable twist of fate (KGB almost never released its victims) her father is released in few days. The story runs about a week, but boy, how fast this kids had to grow up. It is like the innocence of their existence was lost. One day they lived in the most perfect country, where justice and equality ruled, or so they were brought up to believe. And next they new that it all were lies and innocent people were destroyed by regime without mercy. There was also problem of loyalty. Who do you stay loyal to, your friend or your country? The movie ends with few laconic lines of information what happened to the rest of the class during the war. Somebody was burned in a tank, somebody was hanged for participation in resistance, somebody became an ace pilot. It is a great movie, see it if you have an opportunity. May be you would learn something you did not know about people from the USSR and about this period of history.
