Occasionally, a film comes along which, simply by holding up a mirror to the smallest segment of human activity, manages to illuminate the entire spectrum of the soul. Two siblings living on a smallholding in post-Glasnost Russia squander their days digging up potatoes, chopping firewood or repairing a fence their cow keeps trampling. When their brothers pay a visit, they sit up late drinking tea and vodka. The film’s genius lies in offering a faithful record – verging on post-odern at times by inviting a kind of dialogue between subject and viewer – of the attrition of daily drudgery while revealing the fierce longings and homicidal frustrations of people relegated to the dustbin of history: it is the metaphysical anguish of insects trapped in amber.