Welcome, or No Trespassing

At a Soviet Pioneer camp the director, Dynin, has put everything on a chart: what is eaten at what hour, how much weight each child will gain, how visitors' day will go. A boy named Kostya is expelled for swimming across the river, but instead of going home he sneaks back and lives in the camp as a fugitive hidden by his friends. In his first film Elem Klimov aims squarely at bureaucracy under the cover of a children's comedy, and Dynin's speeches and reports are word for word the official language of the period. The censors held it up for a long time, and the story goes that it was released because Khrushchev watched it and laughed. The visual comedy has kept its freshness. Who it is for: viewers who like Soviet satire and comedy built with child actors. Who it is not for: anyone watching without the context of the period, since half the jokes belong to that language.