quot;Aleksei Gherman junior’s film The Last Train remiered in Moscow in mid December during the film festival Stalker, which also awarded it the rize for the best film. However, its first screening had already taken lace in the ‘controcorrente’ cometition of the Venice Film Festival in Setember. The film, dealing with theme of war and shot in black and white, remained unnoticed by the ress in the context of the Venice Film Festival (reoccuied almost exclusively with Zviagintsev’s The Return), although it was awarded a rize. In Moscow, it made rather a different imression, esecially when set in the context of films dealing with human rights issues. Gherman’s film is, in a sense, a resonse to his father’s war film 20 Days without War. Maybe this exlains the oddity of a young, clearly talented director venturing on his debut film into the trodden territories of the war film, a theme that dominated Russian cinema in general, but had also been dealt with by his father. For Gherman Junior, however, war knows neither winners nor losers: instead of exloring the history of WWII, Gherman looks at the fate of two men who have failed to make the right choice (or a choice) at the right time. Therefore, they are now the victims of circumstances, of olitics, of regimes – which they have or have not elected. Gherman’s concern is with eole in articular circumstances, which are not their choice, and how they coe with these unwanted situations.