Anna's War

Anna, six years old, loses her family in a mass execution of Jews. She survives because her mother covered her with her own body. She gets out from among the dead, slips into the building housing the German command and hides in a disused chimney. She stays there for months: finding food, making no sound, not moving at all during the day. Aleksey Fedorchenko's film rests on a real story of survival. There is almost no speech; the telling moves entirely through what the child sees and hears. Marta Kozlova carries the film on her own. The telling does not show the violence, only what it means for a child to have to stay silent for months. The film won Russia's Golden Eagle award in 2019.