This article appeared in the July 18, 2025 edition of The Film Comment Letter, our free weekly newsletter featuring original film criticism and writing. Drygas’s film, along with titles from other veteran Eastern European directors like Sergei Loznitsa, resonated deeply in Karlovy Vary as a reminder of the region’s turbulent history. The film’s temporal compression—it spans the late 1800s to the mid-1940s in 81 minutes—heightens the sensation that no sooner than soldiers return home after the First World War and cities are restored, the Second World War breaks out. In each war’s aftermath, trains bring back broken bodies, corpses, and starving orphans: the bitter outcome of Europe’s spiral of aggression. In the festival’s main Crystal Globe Competition, Ondřej Provaznik’s Broken Voices (2025) also delves into a young person’s conflicted inner world.