Coach to Vienna

In the final days of World War Two, a young Czech widow is abducted by two deserting German soldiers and forced to ferry them to the Austrian border. Unbeknown to them, she is plotting a brutal revenge for the recent killing of her husband by Wehrmacht forces. Banned even before its release (and remained unseen for over twenty years), Karel Kachyňa’s powerful and often harrowing film takes a humanist approach to war. Controversially, it rejected traditional notions of ‘evil Germans’ and ‘good Czechs’ and instead explores notions of guilt and vengeance, and how war degrades everyone in such violent times. (Second Run)