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Alan Marshall's autobiographical novel of his own youthful fight against polio, has been transposed on to the screen by Czech director, Karel Kachylia.
The setting has been transported from the Australian outback to the Tlumacov stud farm in Moravia, once the largest of its kind in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the action takes place at the turn of the century.
The son of a horse trainer in the Imperial stables yearns to ride his own steed one day. He longs to learn the feats that his father achieves on horseback, and the father promises to initiate him into the finer points of horsemanship as soon as he grows up.
His dreams are shattered when he contracts polio and is hospitalised. On his release, he is confined to a wheelchair. Slowly, he learns to get around on crutches. But he is not satisfied. He still wants to ride a horse.
Kachyfia says of the film: "It is more than just a film about a small boy. The whole story is related as seen through his eyes. It is an autobiography. The boy gives an account of his own life, of his defeats and his victories. Therefore, the way in which the story is told, corresponds to a child's way of thinking and expressing himself. Reality is simplified, stylised chiefly in the pictorial conception, in the composition, form and colour of the film."