BRATSTVO

Before they can return to their unpredictable homeland however, caught up as it is in the throes of change, they have some unfinished business to attend to: an agreement regarding safe passage for the 108th Division must be reached with the Mujahideen. In order to make a good impression back at home the soldiers engaged in illicit trade with the locals attempt to make as much money, as well as accumulate as many of the material rewards of capitalism, as possible. In the process violent altercations occur, which only play into the hands of the Afghan fighters, and that is before the son of a Soviet general ends up in the hands of an Islamist group, at which point the balance of power is tipped anew.

Director Pavel Lungin takes aim at the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, as well as the heroic depiction of this senseless campaign often encountered in contemporary Russia, by debunking the patriotic significance attached to the Afghanistan War as consisting of nothing but hollow words. This saw him accused of being unpatriotic by members of Russia's political elite. A thoroughly entertaining and well-made action film, the work was earlier this year belatedly pulled from programme of the Moscow International Film Festival. MM