A deserter's journey home turns into a fight for survival in Little Kingdom, a 2019 Irish-Slovak drama set against the machinery of wartime control. Jack's search for his wife Eva pulls him into a village governed by fear, exploitation, and an owner who answers to no one.
What is Little Kingdom about?
After walking away from his unit, Jack tracks his wife Eva to a remote mountain village, where she has taken factory work to survive. The village runs on the will of Bar, an owner whose cruelty shapes daily life for everyone under him. Jack's arrival is quiet at first, but staying hidden gets harder by the day. When the secret police move into the area, the couple's narrow window to stay together and stay safe starts closing fast. Peter Magát directs from a script that keeps its focus tight: one family, one village, one closing net.
About the cast
Alicia Agneson and Lachlan Nieboer lead as Eva and Jack, with Brian Caspe, Mark Fleischmann, Abigail Rice, Klara Mucci, Dávid Hartl, and Kristína Kanátová filling out the village around them. The ensemble carries a story that depends on close, controlled performances rather than scale — a small cast holding a claustrophobic setting together. Director Peter Magát keeps the camera near his actors, letting the tension of the piece come from faces and silences more than incident.
Context & significance
Little Kingdom is a co-production between Ireland and Slovakia, a pairing that shows in its landscape-driven visual language and its unhurried, European approach to a story that could easily have been played as a straight thriller. Filed under drama and war, it belongs to a strand of period filmmaking more interested in the daily texture of authoritarian control — factory work, surveillance, a village that polices itself — than in battlefield scenes. That patience is the point: the danger here is bureaucratic and social before it is ever violent.
Watching Little Kingdom on Ktime
Little Kingdom streams on K-Time with a free account login, no extra steps required. The platform's Farsi-first interface makes it easy for Persian-speaking viewers to browse alongside English-language catalogue listings, and the film is presented here in its original English-language version. Create an account to add it to a watchlist or pick up playback later.