(Aleksandr Sokurov, Russia 2007, 92 min., Russian/subtitles)

The director of Russian Ark made this powerful anti-war film in which not a shot is fired. Russian opera legend Galina Vishnevskaya stars as an elderly woman visiting her grandson, an officer stationed among the bored, weary troops at a desolate military outpost. More myth than contemporary politics, the movie juxtaposes her womanly warmth with the hard steel of their weaponry; the value she places on their lives with the pessimism of their mindset; her memories of family life and hopes for their future with the cynicism inherent in their mission. “A film of startling originality and beauty”—Mahohla Dargis, The New York Times.