Podranki on AllMovie

Podranki won a Special Jury Award at the 1977 Cannes Film Festival and the Grand Prize of the All Union Film Festival in 1978. In a fashion which combines drama and humor, the film tells the story of a writer's memories of his youth during and after the Second World War, when he was raised as an orphan in state schools. In the present, his siblings have either died, been sent to prison, or become self-serving bureaucrats. In a key incident in the orphanage, one of his instructors who persecuted him is being given a public reprimand. When the boy later sees that same man alone by himself, sobbing with remorse, he begins to see the impossibility of making simple judgements about people.