Arrested by local rebels, two Russian soldiers wait to serve as bargaining chip in a village of the Caucasus. If the deal fails, it's the death for these two men that everything sets. The one, cynic and mythomaniac, thinks only of taking revenge; the other, younger, tries to understand the enemy. Bodrov was inspired by a short story written by Tolstoy, but this captivity, rough and droll, evokes between the lines the Russian-Chechen encounter. Only the forgiveness finds thanks to the eyes of the director who avoids however any prejudice and grants a luck to all its protagonists. Presented in Cannes 1996, this film had since stayed prisoner of bookcases.

Submitted by Kay