Scarecrow

Rolan Bykov's 1983 Soviet film is about a girl starting school in a provincial town. Lena, twelve, comes to live with her grandfather, a man the town finds strange who has filled his house with paintings, and she is shunned from the start because of it. When the class collectively skips school and the matter is reported to the teacher, the blame is put on Lena, although the informer was the boy she likes and she takes the blame to protect him. What follows is the systematic bullying the class inflicts on her, which the film shows without softening. It provoked enormous argument in the Soviet Union, where showing children this way was found unacceptable, and it reached a very large audience. Kristina Orbakaite stars at twelve. Who it's for: viewers who like hard accounts of childhood and Soviet cinema. Who it's not for: anyone who would rather not approach bullying; the film shows it at length.