A teenage soldier in World War I—a simple village boy with a naive youthful dream of fame and medals—throws himself into the unknown and goes blind in the first battle, thus taking on a new job: intercepting enemy planes by listening to the air through huge metal funnels.

As seen with Kantemir Balagov, master Aleksandr Sokurov is mentoring a new generation of gifted Russian filmmakers. Intriguingly blending a painterly WWI tale with contemporary orchestra rehearsals, Zolotukhin’s debut is awe-inspiring: at once a film from another era, and a pioneer of something new.