Based on the acclaimed Jerzy Kosiński novel, The Painted Bird is a fastidious 35mm black and white summoning of wild, primitive Eastern Europe at the bloody close of World War II.
The film follows the boy’s journey, entrusted by his persecuted parents to an elderly foster mother. The older woman soon dies, and the boy is on his own, wandering through the countryside, from village to village, farmhouse to farmhouse. As he struggles for survival, he suffers through extraordinary brutality meted out by the ignorant, superstitious peasants. He witnesses the terrifying violence of the efficient, ruthless soldiers, both Russian and German.

In a defining scene, one of the peasants shows him the flight of a captive bird, whom the man has painted and then released back into its flock. Immediately, the bird gets attached and ripped apart because it is different from its fellows. That lesson reinforces all he already knows and will soon know better: the difference is fatal.

But there are rare moments of compassion: a German soldier spares him, a priest intervenes on his behalf, and finally, he becomes the protégé of a Russian sniper, who is kind to the child, but ruthless with the enemy. And there are signs of love. He is seduced by an older girl, finally rediscovering the comfort of intimacy, only to realize that he has been used. When he is miraculously reunited with his weakened father at the end of the war, the boy is cold and impenetrable, hardened by his ordeal. Yet we can still glimpse something of the old, sensitive boy behind the eyes of the new. Perhaps there is hope.

The cast includes Petr Kotlár, Udo Kier, Lech Dyblik, Jitka Čvančarová, Stellan Skarsgård, Harvey Keitel, Julian Sands, Aleksey Kravchenko, and Barry Pepper.