The creative documentary The Commune, the feature debut of director Jakub Julény, is a group portrait of a loose collective of Košice residents, united by their underground ethos. Calling themselves Nace/Lesní speváci (“The Forest Singers”), they coalesced around the charismatic, tragically deceased poet, philosopher and thinker Marcel Strýko. Now, decades later, the director delves into the group’s memory field, thematizing the intellectual underpinnings of its members, who chose to be outsiders in order to live freely on the margins of a society coercively “normalized” by the Communist regime. It didn’t take long for their island of freedom to attract the notice of repressive state agencies. The group dissolved, its history haunted to this day by a spectre of betrayal. In an attempt to smooth over past grievances, a friend of the group, Prague philosopher, underground artist and dissident Mirek Vodrážka, organizes a revival of a concert originally performed decades ago in Košice’s cathedral. After all these years, will the old friends reconcile their differences?