Meeting the Enemy (2007)

Run Time - 126 min.  |   Countries - Slovakia  |  
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Synopsis by Nathan Southern

Director Patrick Lancaric's difficult, pedantic anti-war allegory Meeting the Enemy (AKA Rozhovor s nepriatelom) unfurls around the tail end of the Second World War, against a snowy, mountainous Eastern European backdrop. Having commandeered his own escape from German-bound incarceration, a young Russian ex-POW (Alexander Barta) runs headfirst into an incredulous Soviet Commissar (Boris Farkas). Suspicious that the young man may have leaked information to secure his own escape, the official spends an interminable amount of time grilling the refugee about how, exactly, his liberation transpired. In flashback, Lancaric then sets about relaying the details - and dramatizes an ongoing argument between a German captor and the POW, regarding how it is possible to purely hate someone on the basis of orders alone, sans actually knowing the person. This discussion, it seems, transpired while the two men were walking through the snow - until they suddenly and nonchalantly crossed the Russian border and found their roles reversed. Marko Igonda and Monika Hilmerova co-star.