Vlácil's late–career masterwork, and one of the key films of Czechoslovakia's otherwise sterile post–Prague Spring era, Shadows boasts his most lurid synopsis, yet is arguably the most perfect crystallization of his "poetry of film" ideal. Immediately after World War II a Moravian farmer and his family are taken hostage by a desperate Nazi hit squad; as the days stretch into weeks, the Nazis' demands grow more difficult, and the farmer's choices, and future, more limited. The tension between Nazi and Czech keeps the plot boiling, but Vlácil expands the scope to embrace the continuing tension in the farmer's everyday life: captive to his captors, he also still needs to play husband to his wife, father to his son, and friend to his neighbors. Fitting a nuanced psychological portrait more attuned to Kieslowski into a narrative more worthy of Stallone, Shadows of a Hot Summer is one of the rediscoveries of the year.