Tales from Cold Mountain

On a frigid winter morning, Sergei ducks into his stinking little hut in the woods to attend to his 14-month-old daughter. Sveta is chubby and still. "She doesn't play very much," says her mother Lena, a friendly, slightly simple woman with a mouth full of rotten teeth. Sveta was born in prison, where Lena was serving time for killing her previous companion, the father of another child. Lena got four years, but was released after one. She says her older child, born in the woods, was adopted: "The prosecutor said he would find her a good family." Sergei, Sveta and Lena...