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The film begins and ends on October 16th, 1999, with 20-year-old Kolia, (Maksim Emelyanov), a Russian army recruit, recording and narrating with a handheld video camera, as young, drunken Russian soldiers taunt, terrorize, and finally execute a civilian Chechen couple in front of their teenage daughter Raissa (Zukhra Duishvili). Kolia's story is one of four personal narratives that unfold against the backdrop of the ruins of a village in Chechnya, the flood of civilian refugees from the village, and a family partially reunited. We first meet Kolia as a pot-smoking guitar player in Perm, 2300 kilometers from the Chechen border, where he is taken into custody for possession of drugs and drafted into army service. As a new recruit, he undergoes a brutal transformation from an innocent youth into a "dehumanized killing machine." When Kolia's fellow soldiers, kill the Chechnan couple, the couple's nine-year-old son, Hadji (Abdul Khalim Mamutsiev) hides and watches and when it is safe, he is able to carry his infant brother to relative safety. The trauma of his parents' death renders him mute. He is helped along the way to the refugee camp by other Chechen refugees and eventually, he is befriended by Carole (Bérénice Bejo), a French-born, Chechnya-based NGO worker. Carole, who works as a researcher and representative of the Human Rights Committee of the European Union, helps Hadji regain his ability to speak. Hadji's elder sister Raïssa searches for both brothers. Helen (Annette Bening), a Red Cross worker, is interviewed by Carol and places hope in the International response to the Second Chechen War to the centuries-old struggle of the Chechen people. Raissa, reunited with her baby brother, escapes once again from the village with the help of other Chechen refugees. She has to leave without Hadji, against her will, because of the Russian federal forces' aerial bombing. Raissa helps Helen at the International Red Cross orphanage. Both Helen and Carole are discouraged when the United Nations Commission of Human Rights report of April 2000 does not declare the situation in Chechnya a humanitarian disaster. Carole delivers her report to the United Nations but soon realizes that not many of the participants are listening. With the help of Carole and Helen, Hadji is reunited with his siblings. The film ends at the beginning, with Kolia's filming of the attack on Hadji's family.
intrigue