The Excursionist

Russia, after the Second World War: Eleven-year-old Maria is crammed together with her pregnant mother and many other prisoners in a cattle car. They are persecuted as Lithuanians by Stalin’s regime and deported to one of the Siberian Gulags. When her mother dies during the transport, Maria manages to escape. From now on, the girl is all alone and has to battle her way back to Lithuania through the Altai region thousands of kilometres away. But she is lucky: When completely exhausted she is discovered in the woods by a man – Vitiok. He takes Maria to old Nadia. The good-natured woman cares for the foreign child, gives her the cover name of Masha and teaches her Russian. They spend happy months together until the villagers become suspicious. Maria cannot stay. So Vitiok buys a ticket to Lithuania, passes off Maria as a mute child and puts her on the train. She knows she must not speak a single word. But at night, she talks in her sleep and is denounced to the conductor by a fellow passenger. Maria has to flee again, but she does not give up the hope that this terrible “excursion” will end eventually and she can get back home.