The Guard

The film is about young soldiers in the Soviet Internal Troops. They are subjected to systematic pressure from the men above them, an arrangement known as dedovshchina. The events take place largely in a railway car used to move prisoners. The unit guarding the car is made up of conscripts. The closed space, the hierarchy and the time enlarge the pressure. The film does not turn the violence into spectacle; what it shows is how ordinary it becomes. How an institution protects its own internal order sits at the centre of the story. The ninety six minutes pass on a single journey. Aleksei Buldakov and Sergey Kupriyanov appear in Aleksandr Rogozhkin’s Soviet film, completed in 1990.