Identity Card

Ondrej Trojan's 2010 Czech film follows four boys across the three years between fifteen and eighteen. It is set in Czechoslovakia under Soviet occupation in the seventies, and the title comes from the identity document teenagers received at fifteen. Its idea is that repression is lived not through great events but through daily detail. Hair length, the music people listen to, identity checks and school records are the material; police violence appears somewhere among them, in unprepared moments. It is adapted from Petr Sabach's book. The tone moves between bitterness and comedy; the incidents are sometimes funny and their consequences are not. Trojan avoids making the period look nostalgic. Who it's for: those who like Czech cinema about the Eastern Bloc years and coming-of-age narratives. Who it's not for: viewers expecting a single plot; the film is episodic and builds no central drama.