Winner of the 1966 Academy Award for Best Foreign Film and presented as part of LIFF 2021’s Kafkaesque Cinema selection, The Shop on the Main Street is a World War Two drama with both a supreme lightness of touch and highly impactful emotional heft. Tono is a Slovak carpenter appointed, as a bullying tactic by his brother-in-law, as the ‘Aryan controller’ of an elderly Jewish widow’s button shop. Not realising the true nature of his appointment, Tono forms an affectionate bond with its proprietor Ida. Naivite and wilful denial help reinforce their insular reality, as the Nazi threat draws ever closer.

Screened as part of our partnership with Dr Angelos Koutsourakis at the University of Leeds on his Arts and Humanities Research Council project The Kafkaesque in World Cinema.