Prisoner of the Mountains

Released 1996
Stars Sergei Bodrov Jr., Oleg Menshikov, Jemal Sikharulidze, Susanna Mekhralieva, Alexander Bureyev, Valentina Fedotova
Directed by Sergei Bodrov

An old man, the Muslim patriarch of a mountain village, takes two Russian soldiers prisoner because he wants to trade them for his own son. Movies can have a way of putting faces to headlines. I have been reading for years about the various obscure rebellions in the old Soviet Union, and now I can put faces to them, and see what they come down to. The war that brings them together--a war between the Russian central government and Muslim rebels in the Caucasus Mountains--is based on a hatred so old and durable that this movie, set in the present day, is based on a short story written by Leo Tolstoy more than 150 years ago.

Summary by Roger Ebert