And the Fifth Rider Is Fear

A Jewish physician in Nazi-occupied Prague is compelled to work cataloguing the homes and possessions of his countrymen as they are displaced to designated ghettos. When he helps an injured resistance fighter, he is plunged into a moral and ethical dilemma, and begins a nightmarish odyssey to help save the man. Focussing on the intense anxiety, paranoia and terror prevalent in a fascist state, Zbyněk Brynych’s The Fifth Horseman is Fear subverts its historical context, creating an expressionistic, thinly disguised allegory about communist Czechoslovakia – or indeed living under any totalitarian system - that is richly atmospheric and frighteningly real. (Second Run)