A young boy's loss of innocence in a pre-perestroika Russian prison is the harrowing, Kafkaesque premise of LESSONS AT THE END OF SPRING. During the chaotic last months of the Khrushchev regime, a teenager's errand to the village market for bread ends in a nightmarish confrontation with local police. Sadistic shower room confrontation, unsanitary detention facilities and a tomblike prison cell become classrooms on the horrors of the human soul. As his fellow captives are tortured, die or quietly lose their minds, the naive 13-year-old becomes an unwilling witness to startling lessons in honor, hatred, conscience and survival. Contains nudity and mature themes.—Jim Stark