The Muslim

A Russian soldier held captive in Afghanistan for years comes back to his home village, and the discovery that he has converted to Islam shakes everyone in it. While he was gone his father hanged himself, his brother served a prison term, and the life of the woman he was once engaged to changed completely. Drinking never stops in the village and the local boss is selling land off to the newly rich for dollars, so the returning man ends up the only sober and hardworking person there, and his commitment to his new faith draws hatred and rejection from everyone including his own family. Vladimir Khotinenko’s hundred and ten minute film provoked hard argument in Russia. Evgeny Mironov, Aleksandr Baluev and Nina Usatova star, and it won the grand jury prize at Montreal in 1995.