The White Dove

The first feature by revered director František Vláčil (MARKETA LAZAROVÁ) is a poetic, deeply humanist parable following the intersecting fates of a carrier pigeon, a wheelchair-bound boy (Karel Smyczek) in Prague who shoots the bird down and then nurses him back to health with the help of an artist (Václav Irmanov), and the faraway German girl who misses her lost pigeon. Told through gorgeous, black-and-white images, this key precursor to the Czechoslovak New Wave touches on themes of empathy and freedom with the timelessness of a fable.