Loosely based on Vasil Bykov’s novella ‘Sotnikov’ that Larisa read while hospitalised, the film is a Dostoyevskian essay of treachery and grit with weighted spiritual implications. Set in wartime Belorussia, it revolves around two Soviet partisans who separate from their unit while searching for provisions. Thrust against purgatorial plains of ice and sheets of snow, the partisans are captured by the Germans and interrogated. One soldier, Sotnikov, refuses to crack under torture, while the other immediately betrays information to save his own life.