Compartment No. 6

AroView: This Finnish/Russian co-production is fully realised, deeply humanist work that is transporting in more ways than one.

We get the vicarious thrill of witnessing a young Finnish woman’s precarious journey by train from Moscow to Murmansk, even as she is crammed into a sleeping compartment with a toxic Russian miner. With much to say about the hard-scrabble, bitingly cold Russian reality, this is enticingly unpredictable in the way that travel often is, so don’t make any assumptions but definitely get on board.

“Despite the bone-chilling cold of its location in Murmansk in Russia’s remote north-west, there’s a wonderful human warmth and humour in this offbeat romantic story of strangers on a train.” ~Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

“The performances, the writing and the direction all conspire to make it feel fresh and specific, and as bleak as the settings may be, it has a delicious black comic streak and shares the buzz of personal re-awakening without ever feeling obvious.” ~Dave Calhoun, Time Out