In the Fog (В тумане / V tumane)

Wednesday 6 October at 7.30pm

Sergei Loznitsa│Belarus/Russia│2012│127 mins│M violence

In German-occupied Soviet Russia in 1942, a supposed turn-coat Russian partisan is to be executed – but moral complexities emerge in this intense, slow-burning war drama.

“Set in Belarus in 1942, the film begins with a lengthy travelling shot … which ends with the Nazis hanging Belarussian resistance fighters. It then proceeds to chronicle what happens after two partisans arrive at the house of a comrade widely believed … to have betrayed the executed men. He protests his innocence, but they are no more persuaded by his claims than his wife, and they take him through the forest, hoping to avoid discovery by the German forces patrolling the district. What follows not only shows the respective destinies of the three men but sketches, in flashback, their characters and their different responses to the question of how best to deal with the occupying German forces. Loznitsa adopts a slow, stately pace, allowing a number of cruel ironies to emerge from the stark, simple storyline with steadily accumulating dramatic force… [he] knows that war exists and won’t go away; he tries to show what it might do to our souls.” – Geoff Andrew, Time Out