When you think of movies about adult-child relationships, which one has touched you the most deeply? Before seeing Kolya, my pick would have been Witness. It's hard to top the special rapport between Harrison Ford as a hard-boiled detective and Lukas Haas as a young Amish boy who witnessed a brutal murder in that suspenseful film.        

But in Kolya (Oscar-winner for Best Foreign Language Film of 1996), the relationship between a lonely six-year-old Russian refugee and the middle-aged Czech cellist forced to be his guardian seems even more touching. These two unique individuals overcome barriers of age, politics, language, and culture to form a strong emotional bond in the Russian occupied Prague of 1989 on the eve of the Velvet Revolution.

Zdenek Sverak, who plays the cellist Louka, seems quite at home with this role. His dramatic screen presence reminds me a bit of Sean Connery. But it is Andrej Chalimon, as the young Kolya, who pulls us into this movie so completely. His big sad eyes, his little feet in untied shoes trying to navigate an escalator for the first time, his joy at finally seeing a Russian flag, and practically everything else he does charmed and moved me greatly. Naturally, credit for this remarkable child’s performance must also go to the director, Jan Sverak, who is Zdenek Sverak’s son.

Director Sverak admits facing certain challenges in working with a child actor, even one as outstanding as Chalimon. "Professional actors get better with each take, but with child actors, the more takes the worse they get," he explained in a interview during the U.S. press tour for Kolya. "I had to get it right by the third take or lose authenticity," he added.

Sverak found the incredible young Kolya star through a Moscow casting agency, but only one month before filming was to begin and only after asking to see videotapes of Moscow’s worst young troublemakers. According to Sverak, "Andrej (Chalimon) was on the tape answering some pretty stupid questions, but you could read his eyes before his answer. His face was talking to me."

Facing a different challenge directing his own father, Sverak confessed, "I can’t push him beyond where he feels comfortable, so I hypnotize him and tell him everything is positive. I never criticize him in front of others. I just whisper in his ear."

The older Sverak, who not only stars as Louka in Kolya but also wrote its humanistic screenplay, suffered jet lag on his trip to the U.S. and opted for rest instead of doing interviews. Claiming his father doesn’t travel well, the younger Sverak said, "He likes staying in his cottage, chopping wood, and writing."

I say more power to Zdenek if his cottage-dwelling and wood-chopping help him write additional scripts as good as Kolya. This appealing film sends a positive message to viewers everywhere, for if Kolya and Louka, with all their vast differences, can learn to live together and care about each other, there might be hope for the rest of the world.

(Released with English subtitles by Miramax and rated "PG-13 for some sensuality.)