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This film was made by Miklds Jancso in 1964. before his early masterpiece, The Round-up; and he has said that My Way Home is autobiographical in feeling, if not in fact. It is set in the spring of 1945 during the last days of the battle for the occupation of Hungary.
A 17-year-old Hungarian, Joska, is making his way home through straggling deserters, soldiers and Resistance groups. He had been held prisoner in Germany before escaping, and he now knows he will have nothing to do with
Germans. But he is arrested by the Russians as a deserter, and sentenced to be shot. He is reprieved when his nationality is discovered, and he is put into an internment camp.
Released by mistake, he is arrested a second time by another Russian unit, under suspicion of being a German. After he tells his story, he is left in charge of a Russian soldier to look after a herd of cows that supply milk for the unit. The two young men, Jdska and Kolya, are left alone some miles from the camp, and, slowly, they become friends. But Kolya had been wounded during the fighting and his wound becomes worse. Joska takes his uniform and gun and sets out in search of medical aid for him. He comes to a road on which Hungarians are streaming westward, and stops a car at gun-point. He forces a doctor to return with him to Kolya, but they are too late, and the young Russian has died. Still wearing the uniform of his friend, Joska continues his journey home. In the train he is recognised by the people he held up on the highway, and when they realize he is not a Russian soldier, they beat him and pitch him from the train. Joska staggers to his feet and starts the long way.