"The Cow"
1994
Directed by Karel Kachyna

A brilliant achievement from Czech filmmaker Karel Kachyna: the parable about a simple man on a remote mountain top who cares for his ailing mother until he is forced to sell their single cow in order to buy her morphine. The mother dies anyway, but is replaced by a house maid, who in turn is replaced by another woman. This enigmatic fable-like film evokes a sense of hope amidst the most mundane events of an ordinary life in an extraordinary achievement of post-Velvet Revolution Czech cinema. Czech with English subtitles.  86 minutes.