There cannot possibly be a more desolate place to live on Earth than in the vast plains of Siberia where the sparsely populated people miserably eake out a living and simply pray that there is no return  to war.  When Sasha’s grandmother fails to answer her phone for days the family send him off on the long journey that will take days which he will need to undertake on foot and on horseback when the roads run out.

His brother-in-law Dima, a local policeman, is sent with him which turns out not to be the wisest of ideas as the two men have been having an secret affair for some time, and throwing them together like this is taramount to creating a very volatile situation.

It’s fairly obvious that in this backwater and ultra-traditional culture that the two  men have very little or no chance of making any sort of relationship work, but that still doesn’t prepare you for the shocking ending that writer/director Viatcheslav Kopturevskiy has planned in this excellent heart wrenching drama.