Compartment No. 6 is set aboard a long train journey across Russia, a country we don’t hear much of these days (I wish!). It has won multiple awards, including the Grand Prix at Cannes, and is by the Finnish filmmaker Juho Kuosmanen, who has said of his films: ‘Basically, they are boring.’ It’s true, this is not eventful, even if the restaurant car does run out of hot food at one point. This is a character-as-plot film and if that isn’t your style it is going to feel like a very long journey indeed. The trip is from Moscow to Murmansk, which is way up north. It is days long and you may even feel it in real time. (But I didn’t, just to be clear.)
The film, which was first released last July, is set in 1998, a year before Putin came to power, so recent events don’t come into play.
