The film is based on a novel by Polish-American writer Jezyko Kosinski and published in the United States in 1965. The film depicts the tragic growth story of a little boy in Eastern European countries in the context of World War II, not directly writing battlefield scenes, but focusing on the lives and mental states of ordinary people in the wartime rear, the film is black and white, but also symbolizes the grayness of human nature.
The painted bird is an Eastern European folklore, a cruel entertainment, to catch a bird, paint its feathers in color, and then release it into a flock of birds, and the painted bird will be attacked to death by its kind as a threatening heretic. The author of the novel used such a name to imply that he was defined as a heretic, a minority because of his skin color (close to the brown race), and mistakenly thought of gypsies (then synonymous with thieves). The little boy has experienced inhuman tragic experiences, constantly being ridiculed, beaten, discriminated against, and even molested and sexually assaulted, all kinds of human ugliness are staged, and the witches of cults and hypocritical religious elements are also interspersed with them.
In this oppressive environment, the little boy began his weak revolt: the first time was a woman with a strong sexual desire who preferred to make peace with the sheep rather than accept the caresses of the little boy, which made the little boy feel greatly ridiculed, and he could not bear it, he killed the sheep and threw the sheep's head window into the woman's room, and began to change from a passive bearer of violence to a violent giver; the second time, after the Red Army had killed a group of bandit-like Gosats, the child smiled at the upside-down corpse; the third time was when he received the Red Army officer." "Eye for Eye for Tee" encouragement, shot and killed a small trader who discriminated against him as a Jew.
After careful teaching, the little boy embarked on the road back to his hometown with his long-departed father, and when he saw the number marked on his father's wrist, he realized that his father had been in a concentration camp, and it turned out that it was not his parents who had taken the initiative to abandon him, so he understood and wrote his name "JOSKA" on the window, which also meant that he had embarked on the road of returning to his hometown and returning to humanity.
The film's awards include the Golden Lion (nominated) in the main competition section of the 76th Venice Film Festival (2019), the Best Film (nominated) at the 33rd European Film Awards (2020), the 24th Golden Satellite Awards (2020) Best Foreign Language Film in the Film Division (nominated), and the 41st Boston Film Critics Association Awards (2020) Best Foreign Language Film (nominated).