Days of Eclipse

he Strugatsky Brothers' Billion Years Before the End of the World gets a visionary treatment in Sokurov's moody chronicle of a disillusioned doctor posted to a remote Central Asian village. As the doctor attempts to conduct his research project, a mysterious persecution begins, and a boy appears on his doorstep. Sokurov's enigmatic story fashions its science-fiction source -- the Strugatskys also wrote the source novel behind Tarkovsky's Stalker -- into an existential study while interspersing ethnographic footage from the area. Alexei Ananishnov, the picture of strapping handsome youth, plays the doctor.