AllMovie

Geopolitics and big oil play into the capture of a British geologist (Anthony Andrews) by the Russian military in Iran at the end of 1945. As soon as they capture him, they ship him off to a Siberian prison camp. The majority of the rest of the film is about his attempts to survive, and the relationships and adventures he has while imprisoned. Despite the presence of an English star, the rest of the major performers in this film are Russian, and it was one of the first films made on Russian soil to clearly depict life in the infamous gulags (prison labor camps) of Siberia. The geologist has numerous significant relationships, but the most dramatically compelling are with a female camp doctor and a young girl prisoner.