Thoroughly mesmerising chronicling of the initiation of a young teen (Kravchenko) into the horror and insanity of war. Soviet Belorussia, 1943 and a young partisan, left behind by his unit returns to his village only to find a mass of bodies, including those of his family. This epic, allegorical and traumatising enactment of the hellish experience of war (especially its effect upon a generation of Soviet people) is rendered by Kilmov as a disorienting amalgam of almost lyrical poeticism and expressionist nightmare.