BROTHERHOOD IN THE BITTER COLD (Part 2) — Based on a True WWII Story

This movie is dedicated to my grandfather. The stories here are inspired by what he told us during our childhood, with pauses, with jokes, with names that sometimes changed from one evening to the next. I do not know exactly how much of it was truth and how much was imagination, and I never wanted to find out. In memory of Valics Kálmán (1909–1989) “Some of the characters in this movie are entirely invented or renamed, but the way they walk through the snow belongs only to them.” — PART II — Siberia, 1948. Five prisoners reach a frozen river that must be crossed in the open — exposed, silent, counting on nothing but the ice holding. That night, by a small fire in the forest, the one who jokes about everything finally tells the story behind his jokes: a coal mine, a collapsed gallery, and a promise made to God one step from his face. And when the cold takes the feeling from Ion’s hands, it gives him back the one memory it cannot touch — a field hospital in Ukraine, a nurse named Ana, and a small embroidered handkerchief he has carried against his ribs ever since.