In a coal-mining community adjacent to a gulag in the remote Soviet Far East, just after the war, the life of the makeshift village mixes freely with that of the camp and offers its own miseries, punishments, and occasional triumphs. But the mischievous scamp Valerka (director Vitaly Kanévski's autobiographical protagonist) and his more practical girlfriend Galiya turn their barren community into a backyard for childhood explorations of the all too real and the fantastic alike. If there's hell to pay, it's practice for adult life in the Stalin era. Kanévski, himself a political prisoner for eight years, grew up in the Primorsky region where the film was shot employing marvelous local nonprofessional actors and the grit of life that is virtually unchanged today. Kanévski is living proof of the film's message, as Toronto Festival's Dimitri Eipides put it, "the uncanny ability of people, especially children, to survive with their optimism"-or, in this case, their art-"intact." Winner, Best First Film at Cannes. (JB)