In order to get Gorki Studios to provide funding for the film, Erkenov and writers Yuri Polyakov and Vladimir Golodov provided the studio with two fake scripts in addition to the real one. The Soviet government censored the film and banned its export. It was not screened outside of the country until the Berlin International Film Festival in 1994 after Erkenov founded his own sales company.[4]
Synopsis
The film lays bare the cruelties inflicted on young Red Army recruits by their superiors at a training camp in Central Russia. The film has no narrative structure and rather than telling a story uses vignettes with minimal dialogue to expose the conditions in which Soviet army recruits lived. The film explores themes of homoeroticism.[5][6]
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