151 minutes of Soviet trauma cinema that will wreck your entire week — in the best way.
The difficult fate of a man who went through the war, the horror of Hitler’s and Stalin’s camps, but retained fortitude, decency and purity.
Acting
Ivan Lapikov carries decades of pain in every silence.
Direction
Gurin refuses to let you look away from horror.
Director
Ilya Gurin
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Released during the Soviet Union's final months, this was among the last major films to directly confront Stalinist repression before the collapse.
Gurin based Aleksei's dual-camp experience on documented cases of Polish soldiers imprisoned by both Nazis and Soviets — a historical reality Soviet cinema rarely acknowledged.
SU
