Kindergarten

Notes

Yevgeny Yevtushenko's debut film is a "semi-autobiographical" work recalling the poet's evacuation at age 9 from wartime Moscow to Siberia. Drawing on a variety of movie genres, especially Italian neo-realism, Yevtushenko chronicles the myriad adventures of Zhenya who flees eastward by train after the German invasion of 1944. After the train is strafed by gunfire, the boy, with violin in hand, falls in with a band of thieves and has his instrument smashed by black marketeers. His odyssey continues among the hardy peasants of the Siberian steppes. The events are accompanied by Yevtushenko reading fragments of his poems: "Do not forget your children, my country. The war is their kindergarten." The director plays a small part as an eccentric chess player

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