Apple Tree of Paradise

Polish filmmaker Barbara Sass scored a significant international success with 1985's The Girls from Nowolipki. Set during the final days of World War 2, the film charted the fortunes of four impressionable teenaged girls. Sass immediately followed Nowolipki with a sequel, Apple Tree of Paradise. Girls no more, the four heroines emerge into womanhood with a more clear-eyed outlook on life. The director's recreation of postwar Warsaw is accurate to a fault, serving as a convincing backdrop for her absorbing storyline.