User Reviews

I saw this movie yesterday and just wanted to disagree on a slight point ... In my house we felt great compassion for the convicted boy in jail. His face changed so much in a few years, too much suffering and more to come, nauseating. What makes us mad more than his crime(s) is the world that sends its kids to hell and that cynically turns them into freaks/monsters/lunatics/victims etc... pick one up. This is a tough subject treated here with a sensitive approach. and i understand that one can be reluctant to face part of the violent reality of the 21st century. One the other hand one does not hesitate to see a movie which setting is a WW1 battleground full of injured people or more violent things if possible. Go and see this movie, the work of the authors is great, i hope they will manage to produce the rest of it.

what makes this movie special in my eyes, is that it mainly deals with the effects a war has on the country that leads the war. it's not about all the crimes that happen in Chechnya, but what it means that Russia doesn't care about the young men that return from its war. The film consists of interviews immediately after their return to three - if i remember rightly - men and one woman who served in the war. And then it confronts their statements with those of a veteran from the Sovietunion's war in Afghanistan. What really impressed me was the way, the movie manages to keep you from judging these guys for what they did. So the most impressive scene was: after three years one of the guys, the most shy on at first is reported to have burglarized a house and then raped a child. And when Tamara Trampe visits him in prison and interviews him again, you just feel no compassion for him, actually nothing but contempt. But then she shakes his hand good-bye and wonders why he has so cold hands, and he just says "oh, i always have cold hands. they broke my hands in here" at least i felt sorry for him again. Without losing your feelings for him as a child-molester you see this young boy again. I do understand if people don't want to see it that way. But if you feel able to, go and see this movie!