Filmed in 1996, "Prisoner of the Mountains" is a project which is previous to the war in Chechnya. Sergei Bodrov tells that it's Leo Tolstoy who inspired him and at the time of the shooting, he hoped that the conflict which had begun in Chechnya would stop. Unfortunately it wasn't the case. At the beginning, the shooting should take place in Chechnya, but Sergei Bodrov preferred the Dagestan, because he fell under the charm of this country. "The life is short, the world is small. Why, since thousands years, the men continue to be in confrontation? Our starting point is Tolstoy's reflection on the war and the peace." Nevertheless, the amalgam was easy and the Russian critics didn't miss to make the link with the Chechen conflict, even if the director defends himself hardly. For him, all the wars have only one purpose: to spread blood instead of helping the men to understand and love themselves. "I don't know how to stop the war. It's easy to start it, but difficult to end it, as it's easier to kill a man than to love him". It's this thought which drives the film telling about the meeting between two men in a strange place, then nothing predisposed them to live together closed at hand, joined by a chain at their feet like the convicts. Paradoxically, it gives a little note of humor to this film which should have been only tragic. It's not surprising from a film-maker, who began as a caricaturist and lets also a great part for the dream and the poetry. A small troop of Russian soldiers maintains the order in Caucasus, but the troop is attacked by local rebels. The only two survivors, Sasha and Vania, are arrested and detained by Abdoul-Mourat, the patriarch of the nearby village. They must be exchanged for the son of the patriarch, jailed by the Russians. If the exchange fails they will be executed. The film tells us this wait, which takes place in a little bit lunar landscape which doesn't go without evoking sometimes the Desert of Tartar, by the nonsense of the soldiery condition and the war. The film begins with a sequence of conscription, a crowd of young soldiers, quite bare, who pass a medical examination and who are qualified to make a phoney war. We discover Vania, the own son of Sergei Bodrov, magnificent, we could see him in "East-West" by Regis Wargnier, 1999 (proof that his father was right to bet on his real talent), Vania plays a young dreamer, with an incredible pure glance, a bit in love with the young daughter of their jailer, Dina (very well acted by Soussana Mekhralieva, young schoolgirl from Dagestan). Prisoners, Vania and Sasha are an excuse to compare two attitudes: Vania isn't bellicose but Sasha, played by Oleg Menshikov ("The Barber of Siberia", "Burnt by the Sun"), a professional soldier, who doesn't hesitate to kill cause it's the war. And when his number will be up, he will be killed throat cut because this is the hard and absurd law of the war still pushed to its paroxysm. During the night his ghost will come to haunt Vania, pardoned thanks to the love of the young girl. But too late, we'll see him running away in the dry mountains when the helicopters of the Russian army arrive to avenge them.
This film obtained a huge success in Russia in 1996. Selected in Cannes International Film Festival in "Quinzaine des Realisateurs" category. Nominated for the Oscar and the Golden Globe in "Best Foreign Film" category. The film arrives in France on July 17, and it's necessary to see it just to receive a lesson of cinema: every take is like a painting, a work of art. Calm, colours, sounds, everything redraw the life of a village in the back of the world which would have all to be quiet except that the war comes to turn everything topsy-turvy and doesn't miss to remember us all the conflicts in the world. Because the philosophy of the film is to illustrate what Tacit has written already: "Where they made a desert, they say that they made peace". Damned is the war!

Submitted by Kay