The Last Train 2004    star_border 4.3
A fat middle-aged man in German officer's uniform gets off a train somewhere in Russia in winter. He is a doctor who has just been called up we learn eventually. This is the end of the line- the Germans are about to retreat. He goes to a hospital which is being evacuated and is thrown out. Kicked out he wanders with another conscript- a failed actor turned postman. The postman is deafened by a shell explosion. They meet their Russian equivalents, others as bad at killing as they are, while other Russians and Germans kill one another around them.

Elixir 1996    star_border 5.7
Loosely based on tales by E. T. A. Hoffman. In a wonderland inhabited by fiery salamanders and winged spirits, good fights evil in search of a life-giving talisman whose finder will rule the world.

The Horse, the Violin and a Little Bit Nervous 1991    star_border 7
Irina Evteeva’s debut quickly became a kind of manifesto for the one-room experimental studio: it defines classification by interweaving animation, appropriated footage, feature and documentary to form a unique whole, a film that rushes backwards into the future, thereby re-inventing Futurism. Mayakovskiy is the star; his occasional presence holds together a film driven by the sound, the beat, of his poetry. Evteeva develops a dramatic structure of flaring, fading, being from light: violin strings become rays, quivering dull yellow spots, pictures. The plot assails the material from which it derives energy from material. History, growling and roaring, finds its form.