Kolya (1996) on Netflix

Plot summary

In Soviet-occupied Czechoslovakia in 1988, František Louka, a middle-aged cellist devoted to bachelorhood, is blacklisted as politically unreliable. He has lost his place at the Czech Philharmonic and gets by playing funerals at Prague crematoriums. In debt, he accepts the grave-digger Broz's proposal of a sham marriage to a Russian woman so that she can obtain Czech papers. She uses the new citizenship to leave for West Germany, where her boyfriend lives, and her five-year-old son Kolya is left behind in Louka's care. The two share no common language, and Czech and Russian words that sound alike add to the confusion between them.