All My Good Countrymen, also translated as All My Compatriots, (Czech: Všichni dobří rodáci), is a 1968 Czechoslovak film directed by Vojtěch Jasný.
[3] The film begins in 1945 and traces the seasonal or annual changes that a small Moravian village undergoes until the Epilogue, which is sometime after 1958.
The first part of the film set in 1945 establishes the innocence and camaraderie of a village amidst the backdrop of a post-War landscape.
They leave at dawn as the sun rises on a beautiful, idyllic landscape and stop to sleep beneath a tree after taking in the view.
We discover that four of the main villagers have converted, namely, the organist Očenáš, the photographer Plecmera, the postman Bertin, and Zejvala.
The communists greedily inspect their winnings (animals, house, a stockpile of wood) and begin to loot for themselves.
Meanwhile, a tailor sets up shop with his wife and the help of friends, who warn him that the communists will put an end to his good fortunes.
Indeed, a group of communists come and demand he turn over the property on which he has just spent his life's savings and lead a tailoring collective instead.
František the noble farmer leads a mass of townspeople to demand the police turn over some of the wrongly accused perpetrators, namely the priest.
The photographer's wife, aspiring for status and a new house, implores her husband to fill the position left behind by Očenáš.
He returns a clock he had stolen, repaired, to its rightful owner, then collapses from his wound and dies as white goose down covers him like snow.
The painting shifts from formless shapes to lackluster diners to a frenzied dance, with Zášinek soon depicted as a devil with a skull.
He is arrested; police attempt to get others to sign statements alleging his guilt but with no immediate success—the villagers hold out until they are threatened.
On his way to assume the role, he and his daughter's carriage are stopped by a carnival procession of villagers masked with the heads of animals and monsters.
The photographer's merriment is cut short as he clutches his chest and falls to the snow with a heart attack.
Očenáš visits František's family and speaks with his daughters, who tell him the farmer's last words were to "listen to the workers in the fields"-- "things will be better when they begin to sing again."
It stars Vladimír Pucholt as a Czech émigrée who returns home after fall of Communist regime.