Seryozha (1960)

Originally titled Seryozha, the Russian A Summer to Remember was co-adapted by Vera Panova from her own short story. War and Peace director Sergei Bondarchuk plays the new stepfather of young Seryozha (Borya Barkhatov). So close do the stepfather and the boy become in the months following their meeting that, when time comes for the boy to move on in life, he refuses to leave his new dad's side. Their summer idyll takes place on a Soviet collective farm, managed by Bondarchuk and depicted by novice filmmakers Georgiy Daneliya and Igor Talankin in the most glowing and apolitical of terms. Though there isn't much to the plot, the film admirably succeeds as a sort of cinematic tone poem. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi