A 12 year old kid, spurned by the murder of his family, assists his fellow Russians fighting off the invading Germans, as he stealthily moves amid the dismal swamps they are defending. Based on a true WWII story, My Name is Ivan (aka Ivan's Childhood) was Andrei Tarkovsky's debut film and like much of his other work it features great imagery and camerawork but is also awfully dense and occasionally dull, although the ending is a knockout.
