Prisoner of the mountains = Kavkazsky Plennik

By all appearances, ‘Prisoner of the Mountains’ can easily be branded a film about the conflict in Chechnya. In fact, it was conceived well before the beginning of the war and has a short story by Leo Tolstoy, ‘Prisoner of the Caucasus’, as its basis. As the war rages in the Caucasus, young recruit Vania (Sergei Bodrov, Jr.) is sent off to the front, where he befriends a wily and experienced soldier, Sasha (Oleg Menshikov). During an ambush, the pair is captured by Muslims forces and taken prisoner to a mountain village. The leader - Abdel Murat (Djemal Sikharulidze), intends to use the soldiers as exchange currency against his son, held prisoner by the Russian army. As their stay in the village extends, a mutual understanding develops between Vania and Abdel Murat as well as a tender friendship with his daughter. However, Sasha plots to use this new found understanding as a means for achieving freedom. ‘Prisoner of the Mountains’ is a powerful anti-war fable exploring the universal themes of human friendship overcoming, for a luminous moment, the barriers of language, religion, culture and other physical and mental borders. Filmed on location in Daghestan, ‘Prisoner of the Mountains’ was cast mostly with local villager. This visual feast set among stunning mountainous landscape garnered a scoop of awards and nominations, including Best Foreign Film Oscar Nomination (1996) and the Cannes Film Festival Award (1996). In Russian with English subtitles.