Together with Jaromil Jireš’s The Joke, this directorial feature debut by Evald Schorm is the most incisive attempt to capture the all-pervasive moral enervation of Czech society in the early 1960s, when party bureaucracy prevailed and ideals simply became empty phrases. The victim here isn’t an opponent of the regime, but a loyal young labourer affiliated with the Socialist Youth Movement, who experiences a growing sense of painful disenchantment with the communist cause. This penetrating, psychological character study, heightened by a sober acting performance, renders the film a timeless statement of blind faith which, followed by disillusionment, leads to a destructive existential crisis. The film will be screened in its new, digitally restored version.