During the retreat from Baku in 1920, prisoners of the White Army counterintelligence are dropped off on an uninhabited island in the Caspian Sea, where they are left to die of hunger and thirst. Four of them—the Bolsheviks Miller, Zanoza, Nesterova, and the scientist Shatsky—manage to escape.

Working with children led Barskaya to create superb direct sound and an inspired style of shooting. Don’t look for conventional cinematic syntax here. The film is chaotic in the way that Soviet films still knew how to be, and Langlois couldn’t help but be seduced by its rebellious spirit, its anarchy and love of children, comparable to Vigo’s Zero de conduite. As well as being a film made with and for children, it offers a complex take on Western society. Pre-Nazi Germany is not named as such but is carefully reconstructed, possibly under advice from Karl Radek, and children offer a playful reflection of class struggle – doubly excluded, as proletarians and as minors. “They play in the same way that they live”, one intertitle says. The interaction between their comical games and the yet more ludicrous ones played by adults is developed on several levels.

Lost movie.