Hello, Children!
Hello, Children
1962 · Soviet Union · 88 min
- Director
- Mark Donskoy
- Production company
- Gorky Film Studio
Cast
What it is about
Set in a pioneer camp on the Black Sea coast, the film brings together children from several countries with the first international delegates who visited the camp years earlier. The camp director, Elena Ivanovna, organizes the reunion and recalls how things used to be. The Soviet children act as hosts and must handle several provocations: racial tensions between two American boys, disagreements between French and German boys, and an attempt at political propaganda that the teachers' agreement does not fully prevent.
How it was made
Mark Donskoy directed the film, which was produced by the Gorki Film Studios in 1962. It runs 88 minutes, was made in Russian, and stars Aleksei Zharkov, alongside Pavel Chukhray, Eduard Izotov and Lyudmila Skopina. It blends drama with children's cinema, focusing on coexistence among young people from different countries.
Reception and legacy
The sources consulted offer no reliable information on its critical reception, awards or later influence, so these cannot be described with confidence. Its main interest for film fans lies in its portrait of the internationalism of the period and its treatment of themes such as nuclear war and racial discrimination.
Stills
Trailer
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Trivia
A thousand paper cranes
According to the plot, a doctor promises one of the girls she will recover if she folds a thousand paper cranes, and the other children rally to help her.
A mass on the radio
A Catholic priest plays a broadcast of a mass from St. Peter's Basilica at the camp, breaking the agreement to avoid political propaganda.
More films by Mark Donskoy
Rainbow
The Childhood of Maxim Gorky
Gorky 3: My UniversitiesOriginal Cinematopedia text based on Wikipedia (en) and Wikidata.