Czech director Vaclav Marhoul's cinematic masterpiece "The Painted Bird", is a movie adaptation of Jerzy Kosinski's controversial novel about a lone Jewish boy wandering through a cruel obstacle course of survival and abuse in Eastern Europe at the end of World War II.

The film follows the journey of The Boy (Petr Kotlar), entrusted by his persecuted parents to an elderly foster mother. The old woman soon dies and the Boy is on his own, wandering through the country-side, from village to farmhouse. As he struggles for survival, The Boy suffers through extraordinary brutality meted out by the ignorant, superstitious peasants and he witnesses the terrifying violence of the efficient, ruthless soldiers, both Russian and German. When the war ends, The Boy has been changed, forever.