Between a Siberian gulag in the early 1950s and emigration to Israel in 1971, Mikhail Kalik studied with Tarkovsky and Paradjanov, and made films that are legendary for their lyrical innovation. (He returned post-glasnost to make And the Wind Returneth.) Set in 1938 in a Black Sea resort, Goodbye, Boys is a wistful portrait of teenage joie de vivre cut short by the encroaching military draft. As three boys while away their days, Kalik's free-form structure hints of the way war and anti-Semitism will darken their futures. Goodbye, Boys "joins that select band of films that explore with conviction the uncertainties of adolescence," Ian Christie writes." This sixties view of the late thirties allows Kalik to explore their inner feelings in the last summer before war. Aided by Patashvili's sinewy, mobile camerawork and superb playing from a young cast, the result has a lively eloquence that goes far beyond words or history. Seen today, its ironies are multiple and deeply moving."