Seidi Haarla, Yuri Borisov, Dinara Drukarova, Julia Aug
Please note: Compartment No. 6 will play in-person at Broadway Cinema only.
All aboard for Finnish director Juho Kuosmanen’s follow-up to The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki: a witty, booze-fuelled train journey in a 90s Russian winter which sees two unlikely people forced into close quarters, adapted from the novel of the same name by Rosa Liksom.
90s Moscow: sweet-natured Finnish archaeology student Laura (Seidi Haarla) is travelling from Moscow to Murmansk to view the region’s mysterious ancient petroglyphs. On an uncomfortable train in the freezing cold, she finds that she must share compartment no 6 with gruff Russian miner Vadim (Yuri Borislov). Boorish and drunk, Vadim is openly misogynistic and ridicules Laura’s plans. Yet somehow, as they travel across the frozen wastes, they see new sides of one another, and the hostility between them begins to thaw.
Channelling the wistful romance of a long rail journey, Compartment No. 6 is reminiscent of Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise (though with much more true to life awkwardness), its lonely young characters aided in becoming closer quickly by the compression, alienation and anonymity of travel. A genuinely delightful film, performed with appealing sensitivity by its winning young stars, it nostalgically evokes the last years of pre-digital revolution life, in which neither phones nor internet were mobile, and so on a long train journey you could be really, truly alone. Co-winner of the Grand Prix at Cannes and Finland’s Best International Feature Oscar entry.
