Nicky's Family (2013)

Director: Matej Mináč
Run Time: 96 min.

"Nicky’s Family is a Czech tribute (stirringly deserved) to Nicholas Winton, the Englishman who organized the rescue of mostly Jewish Czech children from Prague when the Nazis invaded. His organization has been active ever since in similar work. Welcome as this picture is, the tribute is only part of its achievement. It has created a cinematic marvel: a reproduction of Prague in 1939. . . . Most of us have seen plenty of film of Nazi devastation, but this film’s director, Matej Mináč, apparently felt that the available footage is not good enough; and so he and his Czech editors proceeded to recreate that crisis. By weaving originals and additions, the film creates the feeling of life in a territory where the Germans could pick up a section of the earth as if it were a blanket and toss it into disorder in the name of their order.

—Stephen Kauffman, The New Republic