One of world's most elusive, iconoclastic, and inimitable film directors, Aleksandr Sokurov has become famous for his eerie meditations on the plight of man and the fate of culture. In THE SECOND CIRCLE, a man walks through a Siberian blizzard, arrives at a remote village, and begins the preparations to bury his father. Told in bleakly beautiful black and white with occasional moments of exquisite color, the film approaches the tragedy of the situation with an oppressive and impassive restraint. At times the film takes a darkly humorous tone, as when the son and a neighbor roll the corpse in the snow, or when the coffin nearly tips over, but the overall effect is utterly devastating as the son goes through the arduous, solitary, even absurd, steps necessary to pass into the future. Once again, Sokurov has crafted a beautiful, brutal, and unforgettable work of film art.