Tame - DVD

One day, a Russian woman living in a remote village has a parcel returned to her. She had sent it to her husband in prison. Frightened and worried, she sets off on a picturesque journey to a distant part of the country where the prison, an almost impregnable fortress for many, is located. She faces bureaucratic absurdity, treacherous characters from the dregs of society, humiliation, violence, and the realisation that the prison doesn't end at the walls and barbed wire, but continues far beyond them.

Loznitsa's latest film is an uncompromising allegory about the state of the Russian soul and the contemporary culture of imprisonment as a legacy of Stalin's social engineering, a part of the state machinery and an instrument of power. Inspired by the works of Dostoevsky, Kafka, and Gogol, the director's depiction of one woman's struggle unusually blends brutal realism with expressionistic satire. A Gentle Creature is a radical political film about a country where both the authorities and the people play the role of phantoms – serving as empty vessels that merely imitate the function they are supposed to perform.