Late August at the Hotel Ozone (1967), directed by Jan Schmidt.
Aka The End of August at the Hotel Ozone.
Decades after the apocalypse, all the men are dead and we have a wandering band of young women, lead by an old woman who is the only one who remembers the world from before the war. The girls are tough and unruly, but they obey their leader, who still hopes to find other survivors. But it has been many years.
The question here: the girls have never known civilization. Do they retain any degree of compassion or are they just savages? When they hear an old gramophone, is it music to them or just noise? The answer is a dark one. Not many happy stories at the end of the world.
Post-apocalyptic stories are natural vehicles for tiny budget independent filmmaking. You just need countryside, abandoned buildings, loose junk and surplus survival gear. Talent and vision help, too.
Some cruelty to animals in this one: a snake, a dog, and we see a cow shot and butchered by a mob of eager young women. Really. They also fish with hand grenades.
On DVD from Facets Video, a company I have not encountered for a long time. They used to have a rental catalog the size of a phone book. Online now.
Czech audio, with English subtitles burned into the image. Is this the original aspect ratio? I can't find a reference.
The disc comes with a booklet which includes an interview with the director. Fun facts:
The film was funded by the Czech Army, which had a film unit and no idea what they were up to. Yes, the filmmakers were soldiers at the time. Everyone else involved were friends from school.
The locations were military "no man's lands", destroyed in the War and never rebuilt.
The girls were non-actors chosen for athletic ability. Auditions involved army obstacle courses.
The film had no distribution. A few years later the director got an anonymous note that the Army was burning old film projects the next day; it included directions on locating his film cans. He went in and rescued his movie.
Eventually it slipped out into international film festivals and he got an award from the Pope.
The story was inspired by On the Beach (1959) (the book).