Behind the Iron Curtain: 21 films that defied the censors

Weekly collection in the app for the week of June 19, 2026.

Under state censorship, Eastern Europe's young filmmakers smuggled absurdism, sexuality and open dissent into cinemas, and some paid for it in banned films and broken careers. The Czechoslovak New Wave laughs, the Polish school mourns, and the Soviets built cathedrals of the image.

This collection of 21 films ran as the weekly theme in the I Like Movies Discover tab for the week of June 19, 2026, featuring Menzel's Closely Watched Trains. Romania (The Forest of the Hanged, Silent Wedding), Bulgaria (The Tied Up Balloon, Iconostasis) and Yugoslavia widen it past the usual suspects.

The collection

1. Closely Watched Trains (1966) Menzel Featured A shy apprentice at a sleepy Czech station during the Occupation is preoccupied with losing his virginity until history hands him a package; comic, tender, then quietly devastating. It won the Oscar. Cast: Václav Neckář, Jitka Scoffin, Vladimír Valenta
2. Loves of a Blonde (1965) Forman A girl from a factory town of women falls for a visiting pianist and shows up at his family's Prague flat; Forman's bittersweet comedy of small hopes and awkward parents. Cast: Hana Brejchová, Vladimír Pucholt, Vladimír Menšík
3. Daisies (1966) Chytilová Two young women named Marie decide the world is spoiled and set about spoiling themselves, wrecking dinners, suitors and a state banquet; anarchic collage cinema the regime banned. Cast: Jitka Cerhová, Ivana Karbanová, Helena Anýžová
4. The Shop on Main Street (1965) Kadár & Klos In wartime Slovakia, an easygoing carpenter is made 'aryan controller' of an old deaf Jewish widow's button shop, and she thinks he is her assistant; comedy curdles into tragedy. An Oscar winner. Cast: Ida Kamińska, Jozef Kroner, František Zvarík
5. Ashes and Diamonds (1958) Wajda On the last day of the war, a young Polish resistance fighter is ordered to assassinate a communist official, and hesitates for one night of doubt and love. Cast: Zbigniew Cybulski, Ewa Krzyżewska, Wacław Zastrzeżynski
6. Knife in the Water (1962) Polanski A quarreling couple pick up a young hitchhiker and take him sailing overnight; three people, one yacht, one knife. Polanski's debut and still a masterclass in tension. Cast: Leon Niemczyk, Jolanta Umecka, Zygmunt Malanowicz
7. A Short Film About Killing (1988) Kieślowski A drifting young man murders a taxi driver without reason; the state then kills him with procedure; both acts filmed with the same unbearable attention. It helped end the Polish death penalty. Cast: Mirosław Baka, Krzysztof Globisz, Jan Tesarz
8. The Round-Up (1966) Jancsó After a crushed uprising, Hungarian authorities herd suspects into a plains stockade and break them with informers, promises and geometry; oppression rendered as choreography. Cast: Zoltán Latinovits, János Görbe, Tibor Molnár
9. Mephisto (1981) Szabó A brilliant German actor keeps rationalizing each accommodation with the Nazi state as his career soars, until he belongs to them entirely; an Oscar winner about the price of the spotlight. Cast: Klaus Maria Brandauer, Krystyna Janda, Ildikó Bánsági
10. Sátántangó (1994) Tarr A collective farm rots in rain and mud until a charismatic man they thought dead returns with a plan; seven hours of long takes that admirers describe as hypnosis rather than duration. Cast: Mihály Víg, Putyi Horváth, Székely B. Miklós
11. Andrei Rublev (1966) Tarkovsky Russia's greatest icon painter wanders a medieval landscape of raids, plagues and cruelty, losing his faith in art until a boy casting a giant bell restores it; shelved for years by Soviet censors. Cast: Anatoliy Solonitsyn, Ivan Lapikov, Mykola Hrynko
12. Come and See (1985) Klimov A Belarusian village boy joins the partisans and witnesses, at closer and closer range, what the German army did to his country; often called the most harrowing war film ever made. Cast: Aleksei Kravchenko, Olga Mironova, Liubomiras Laucevičius
13. The Cranes Are Flying (1957) Kalatozov A Moscow couple is torn apart by the war, he to the front, she into a disastrous marriage; the swooping camerawork electrified world cinema and won the Palme d'Or. Cast: Tatyana Samoylova, Aleksey Batalov, Vasili Merkuryev
14. The Color of Pomegranates (1969) Parajanov The life of an Armenian poet told not as story but as living icons: tableaux of books, wool, pomegranates and blood; banned, recut, and like nothing else ever filmed. Cast: Spartak Bagashvili, Sofiko Chiaureli, Medea Japaridze
15. The Forest of the Hanged (1965) Ciulei A Romanian officer in the Austro-Hungarian army, ordered to fight his own people, walks toward a crisis of conscience under the gallows of the title; the great Romanian film of its era. Cast: Victor Rebengiuc, Anna Széles, Ștefan Ciubotărașu
16. Silent Wedding (2008) Mălăele A Romanian village throws a wedding the night Stalin's death is announced and all celebration is forbidden, so the party continues in total silence; comic until the tanks arrive. Cast: Meda Andreea Victor, Alexandru Potocean, Valentin Teodosiu
17. The Tied Up Balloon (1967) Zhelyazkova A huge stray balloon drifts over a Bulgarian village and the peasants chase, worship and fight it; an absurdist parable the regime understood perfectly, and banned. Cast: Grigor Vachkov, Georgi Kaloyanchev, Georgi Partsalev
18. Iconostasis (1969) Hristov A master icon carver in Ottoman-era Bulgaria is torn between sacred tradition and his own hands' ambition; a meditation on art and faith drawn from a classic novel.
19. Time of the Gypsies (1988) Kusturica A Romani boy with telekinetic gifts leaves his grandmother's village with a gangster who trades in children, dreaming of returning rich; Kusturica's sprawling, magical tragedy. Cast: Davor Dujmović, Borivoje Todorović, Ljubica Adžović
20. W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism (1971) Makavejev A collage on psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich, sexual liberation and state socialism, spliced with a Yugoslav love story that ends in decapitation; banned at home for sixteen years. Cast: Milena Dravić, Ivica Vidović, Jagoda Kaloper
21. The Firemen's Ball (1967) Forman A small-town fire brigade's annual ball collapses in real time: the raffle prizes are stolen, the beauty contest revolts, a house burns down; the satire that got Forman exiled after 1968. Cast: Jan Vostrčil, Josef Šebánek, František Debelka

Keep your place

Half of these are hard to stumble onto and easy to lose track of, which is what a watchlist is for. Keep the collection in I Like Movies and mark films as you find them. A new themed collection lands in the Discover tab every Friday.

Questions people ask

Where do I start with the Czechoslovak New Wave?

Closely Watched Trains (1966), an Academy Award winner and completely approachable: a station guard's coming of age that turns into resistance. Then Daisies for the anarchic end of the movement and The Firemen's Ball for the satire that helped get Forman exiled.

Which of these films were banned?

Several. Daisies was banned with food wastage among the official complaints, The Firemen's Ball was banned in Czechoslovakia after 1968, W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism was banned in Yugoslavia, and Andrei Rublev sat shelved for years in the USSR.

The week before: Sports movies: 21 films beyond the final score. The week after: Directors filming their own lives: 21 autobiographical films. See every weekly theme, or browse every guide, watch order and comparison.