West Coast Premiere (Krug Vtoroy). On the New York opening of Sokurov's acclaimed new film, Caryn James wrote in the New York Times: "The Second Circle begins with a haunting, enigmatic image: a man walks along an empty, snowy road, struggling against the wind. Suddenly he bends, as if kneeling in prayer, and slowly vanishes as the snow fills the screen. There is no sound except the wind, no sign of life except the radio tower that looms in the distance like a halfhearted joke about civilization. As it turns out, this young man is heading to a Siberian village to bury his father, and the harsh, bone-chilling landscape he trudges across is the perfect introduction to this uncompromising, imagistic, masterly work by the Russian filmmaker Alexander Sokurov...(Sokurov) creates a chiaroscuro film whose every scene demands the attention of a painting...Though there are unmistakable traces of social conscience in the Siberian setting and extreme poverty that The Second Circle depicts, this is foremost a mournful human story, one that takes a harsh, unsentimental view of family relationships and death...Bits of the shattered family history are revealed...We are left to guess about the circumstances, but glimpse a man whose bitterness may have led to his lonely death..." From the complex emotions dwelling within such "epic simplicity" (as one critic called it), Sokurov fashions a metaphor for the decay of Russia-and for its redemption.