The original title of this film is "Chervony" which is Ukrainian and means "Red". It's a Ukrainian film although much of the dialog is in Russian (and also other languages), but the main theme is the true account of conditions in a Stalin Gulag concentration camp for Ukrainians. It all happens after the war, many of the prisoners are war veterans, some having landed in this Gulag camp by mistake, but the important point that the film makes is that there was no difference between German and Russian concentration camps during the inhuman age of Hitler and Stalin. The brutality was the same, the recklessness of the guards and officers shooting down prisoners for nothing, while the only difference perhaps was that the Russian slave labour camps were more primitive, and there was vodka instead of brandy. The story is a great drama, it's not only about the main protagonist who introduces the film by arriving at the camp, but many of the prisoners of different groups and nationalities play important parts, and it's a great relief for once that in this (out of too many too brutal concentration camp films) there is a woman as one of the main characters. She is the medical doctor of the camp, and she survives, while many perish in general massacres. It's a cruel and brutal film but highly ambitious in being as true to reality as possible, and the cinematography is marvellous all the way through. So it is basically a very human drama with even some moments of poetry, idylls, beauty and romance, so no one should be deterred from watching it because of its downright and brutal realism.
