72 Meters

The eighties, Sevastopol. Orlov and Muravyov are sailors and the closest of friends. Both fall for the same girl, Nelly; she chooses Muravyov, and the first crack opens between them. When the Soviet Union breaks up the two are posted to the Northern Fleet. During an exercise the submarine strikes a mine left over from the war and settles on the bottom. Seventy-two metres down, with a countable number of hours of air, the crew has to decide what to do. What the film is interested in is not the rescue operation but how the men left in that hull treat each other. Vladimir Khotinenko directs the Russian film; a hundred and seventeen minutes, with Sergey Makovetsky, Marat Basharov, Andrey Krasko and Chulpan Khamatova in the cast. It was made after the Kursk disaster of 2000, in which a hundred and eighteen sailors died, and in Russia it was watched in that shadow.