House with a Turret

An eight-year-old boy and his ill mother are traveling by train to his grandfather’s house. On the way, however, the mother’s health takes a critical turn for the worse, and they are forced to abandon the train in a nameless town where the mother is admitted to a hospital. The plot of this small-scale wartime drama unfolds in Soviet Russia over the course of a winter’s day. Through the boy’s eyes, we witness the state of a society exhausted by the interminable war and persistent food shortages, benumbed by ever-present death, and indifferent to the suffering of others. The tranquil black-and-white images created by Lithuanian cameraman Rimmvydas Leipus masterfully evoke the atmosphere of the Second World War’s penultimate year in the Soviet Union. The picture was based on motifs drawn from the autobiographical story of the same name by writer and screenwriter Friedrich Gorenstein, who also penned the script for Tarkovsky’s Solaris. (Karlovy Vary International Film Festival)