Burning Bush (2014)

Prague, January 1969: Czech student Jan Palach sets himself on fire to protest the brutal Soviet military crackdown following the period of political openness known as Prague Spring. Polish filmmaking great Agnieszka Holland, who was a student at the FAMU film school in Prague during this tumultuous period, vividly recreates the political and cultural zeitgeist of Czechoslovakia in the late '60s. What could have been a standard docu-drama, in the hands of this superb filmmaker, becomes a stirring, complex account of the tension that swirled around these events and set the stage for the defeat of Communism 20 years later. As a period thriller of Cold War intrigue, BURNING BUSH has been likened to THE LIVES OF OTHERS. (c) HBO