“A human being thinks all one’s life that one’s free only when one doesn’t have any ties with anyone, anything. When one can roam around the world freely, recklessly. It is only then when one realizes that freedom really means to have your own piece of land beneath your feet, to have your home where you can always return.” Wild Lilies is a film with common folk as main characters. Ordinary, everyday folk. Pilgrims, beggars, “eternal wanderers”. A war film set in its aftermath. A film about the scars that war leaves on the souls of those who have lived through it and survived. War veterans return from the trenches of World War I to their homeland. They dream about home and putting down their roots. Equally strong, however, is their longing for wanderlust and a life of freedom. Elo Havetta’s Wild Lilies – a polyphonic cinematic symphony – is a creative paraphrase of Vincent Šikula's prose There Isn’t an Inn on Every Hill.

Rastislav Steranka