Late August at the Hotel Ozone, 1967 - ★★★½

Late August at the Hotel Ozone, 1967 - ★★★½

REVIEWED

"We are like vermin the lands hates us."

- Mr's Hubertusova (Beta Ponicanová)

'The End of August at the Hotel Ozone' is a teleplay feeling B&W post-apocalyptic Swiss Family Robinson variant, replacing the familiar desert island with a post-apocalyptic Czech countryside. It kicks off with a simple yet amazingly ingenious way of telling the viewer we are 30 years in future, with elderly Mr's Hubertusova counting down the lifelines in a tree stump, as she explains the world was hit by a nuclear apocalypse, and the last boy died a decade or so ago. Then we're introduced to her family, a tiny band of female survivors. Who have only managed to scrape by so long without resorting to savagery, thanks to the rule of their mother-like leader. Only Mr's Hubertusova's not far from deaths door, and the girls have to face the future by their own rules.

Director Jan Schmidt and writer Jan Schmidt's movie only hints at the cause of the nuclear devastation. Instead they focus on the survivors group dynamic and simple hunter/gatherer way of life, in such as unassumingly raw way it often feels like your watching a documentary. Worth hunting out.

[Personal Reasons For Remembering]

Feeling the groups desolation of having to survive in a world a German version of 'Roll out the Barrel' was the only gramophone record to have survived. Casual warning, the scene the girls brutally kill a bull is probably not gonna go over so well with vegan viewers.

Originally taken from Letterboxd