The Stand-In Thief

Diana (Krystle Valentino) and her little brother (Miggs Cuaderno) go through life and childhood in a country farm village particularly called "Purok 7" (Zone 7) where they experience the familiar, delightful ride that is growing up, along with the challenges that they are forced to deal with despite their young age. For one, their father is living with another woman in the area while their mother is working abroad. Set against a backdrop of laid-back living and copious optimism characteristic of country life, Purok 7 is an endearing tale of innocence and reality, and the wonderfully inescapable bonds of community.

After Tommy Breen, a virtuoso violinist, loses his factory job because the employees have extended their lunch hour listening to him, June Norton, a cigarette girl who lives in the same boardinghouse as Tommy, sympathizes with him and becomes the inspiration for his song, "When You Smile with Your Eyes in Mine." Song publisher Simon Berg signs Tommy, and after the song becomes a great success, Tommy forgets June as he surrounds himself with Broadway lowlife, spends extravagantly, and becomes infatuated with Mona Merwin, a musical comedy performer. When Berg tells Tommy to write a song about home, Tommy, never having had one, fails. After June asks Berg to help her save Tommy from himself, he decreases Tommy's royalty checks. Tommy's Broadway friends desert him when the checks stop coming, and Tommy becomes destitute until Berg sends him to a country cottage he has purchased in Flatbush, where Tommy finds June waiting to marry him. Now inspired, Tommy writes a hit song about home.

This simple story is the feature debut for well-known Slovak theater and television director Juraj Nvota. Set in a Slovak village at the turn of the last century, the story teems with passion, and repressed and hidden emotion. It delves into the search for identity, investigating both love and hatred, while dramatizing the tragic relationship between an adolescent girl (Tatiana Pauhofová) and her ambitious father (Ondrej Vetchý). Set against the striking though simple backdrop of a picturesque, even idyllic, landscape - one ostensibly cut off from any important historical, political, or social context whatsoever - the arrival of an unwanted individual evokes the onset of a cruel drama.

Actually, the die-hard workaholics Claire, Bernhard and daughter Sophie want to cut corners in their new house. But fortunately there is something to do again in the idyllic leisure time: Claire is toying with a position in politics, and there is a huge problem in Bernhard's aircraft company: the new prototype does not meet the legal requirements. Although Sophie the engineer is on her honeymoon, it comes in handy.

We witness the growth of Waheed during one day. The day before his birthday and a week after the death of his parents.