Occupation 1968

Produced by Slovak director Peter Kerekes, this documentary brings an entirely new perspective on a tragic chapter in our history – the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia on the night of 20–21 August 1968. The film meditates on the idea of individual vs. collective memory through five stories from five directors, reflecting the eyewitness accounts of Russian, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Polish and German occupiers. Each story is unique: the Russian account is a quest for forgiveness; in the Hungarian one, the occupation takes the form of a peaceful holiday operation and lending a helping hand during harvest season in the comradely air along the Slovak/Hungarian border; the Polish one is an intimate probe juxtaposed with public expressions of opposition to the intervention; the Bulgarian one tells of a soldier’s violent death; and the German one is about how disobedience was punished. (Art Film Fest)