Andrei Tarkovsky
1962
95 minutes
Upon seeing that this film was only roughly an hour and a half, you decided to knock it off your list so that you would have something to talk about besides Solaris and Stalker on those rare cases when Andrei Tarkovsky would come up in conversation.
This film was made in the Soviet Union in 1962 and stars a child actor, which suggests to you what most of the plot is going to be. The kid is of course a twelve year old orphan during WWII. He's also a child soldier/spy being used to sneak through enemy lines and send vital messages back and fourth by Russian soldiers facing desperate odds against the enemy. Of course the kid ultimately gets caught and hanged by the Nazis. The fact that he only takes 94 minutes to do it and it isn't portrayed on screen is the most joyous part of the film, which is well-paced and well-directed.
There's a pretty cool ditch scene in this, if you're into ditches.
Time to choose something different: