The Painted Bird

Lots of bleak violence. In opening scene, kids attack the main character, grabbing his pet ferret, burning it to death in front of him. Villagers turn the boy over to Nazis. Many characters die or are seriously injured from various causes, most violent: Characters are kicked, beaten, shot, buried alive, sexually assaulted with objects. One dies via suicide. A man brutally beats his wife and, in a horrifying scene, takes out a man's eyes with a spoon. The boy traps and kills a goat, bringing its decapitated head to a woman. An older man rapes the boy (the act isn't shown, but it's clear from positioning on bed what has taken place). Suggested incest. One soldier is supposed to execute the boy but doesn't; another gives him a gun to keep him safe.

A farm worker stares longingly at the farmer's wife, who reciprocates his loaded looks. Main character sees an older man having sex with a much younger woman in the garden. The same woman touches herself suggestively in front of group of leering young adolescent men. Later, she's seen having sex with one of them against a tree. The boy overhears a woman having sex with an elderly man (who's presumably her father), but their bodies are silhouetted in background, so it's unclear exactly what's going on. After the older man's death, the woman asks the boy to touch her body, has sex with him. She later appears to be engaging in sexual activity with a goat.

Language in subtitles includes "s--t," "whore," "bitch," "satan," "evil," "demon," and the insult "Yid."

A few of the men the boy encounters drink hard liquor at home and at a pub. A man smokes.

Parents need to know that The Painted Bird is an extremely bleak, violent adaptation of Jerzy Kosinski's equally harrowing 1965 novel. The drama follows a young, unnamed boy (Petr Kotlár) as he travels from one dangerous, disturbing situation to another in war-torn Eastern Europe during World War II. While this isn't strictly a Holocaust drama, it's eventually made clear that the boy is Jewish and was supposed to be hiding with an elderly woman in the countryside -- until she unexpectedly died, leaving him utterly alone. This film is not for the faint of heart: It includes an almost unwatchable amount of upsetting violence, all of which the young main character experiences or witnesses. There's domestic and sexual abuse, pedophilia, statutory rape, suggested incest, bestiality, anti-Semitic attacks, animal cruelty, torture, and distress. It's not easy to watch even for adults -- when it made the rounds of the European film festival circuit, audiences were known to walk out -- and it's definitely not meant for children or teens.

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