A long path, a long war. It is such a long time that "Prisoner of the Caucasus" is waiting for his time coming. Such a long time that Chechnya is swallowed up by the darkness. Then comes a wonder of a Russian film that talks, without saying it, about the Chechen conflict and is inspired by Tolstoy's short story "What's the news under the sun of the battles".
"Prisoner of the Caucasus" was shot in 1996, and presented with success at the "Quinzaine des Realisateurs" in Cannes and nominated for the Oscar as best foreign film. After that - nothing. The director, Sergei Bodrov, becomes the scriptwriter for "East West" by Regis Wargnier, in which the two leading actors of this film are the great Oleg Menshikov and a young man very sweet , Sergei Bodrov Jr, his own son.
And so the cinema goes on sometimes: from East to West... In an undetermined time, in the rough landscapes of Dagestan, a Russian patrol is attacked by a troop of Caucasian rebels. Only two survivors remain, a quick-tempered regular soldier and an innocent recruit. They are prisoners in a remote village and have to be exchanged for the son of the local patriarch kept prisoner by the Russians. If the bargaining fails, they will be killed. Absurdity and incomprehension, burst of joking and burst of emotion under the too wise glance of a little girl dressed in black: the worst is often certain but the tenderness always possible...
Recently we have liked "No Man's Land" of the Bosnian Denis Tanovic and his exemplar way of showing the drama tearing in pieces his country. A few years before, Bodrov displayed the same saving irony, handled the same humanist humor for the sake of a similar cause...
Submitted by Juliet Regibot