The young Russian soldiers who have seen the battlefield in Chechnya come back as white ravens, marked for life. Weisse Raben - Alptraum Tschetschenien is a cinematic lament on the fate of the naive teenagers who, pressed for money or longing for adventure, go to the front and return physically and emotionally scarred to a society that they no longer fit into. The German directors Johann Feindt and Tamara Trampe utilise a variety of stylistic devices to increase the power of their anti-war pamphlet. Incorporating photographs, inserts with quotations, a voiceover reading from letters to the home front, a home video of a farewell party, images of Grozny, archival footage showing captives, and interviews with veterans and mothers of Russian soldiers, they gradually unravel the personal suffering underlying the lifeless gazes and evasive remarks. Nurse Katja tells about witnessing a rape; Sergej, the Afghanistan veteran who leads the life of a hermit, had nightmares about the child he killed for ten years; 19-year-old Sergej lost his right hand, 18-year-old Petja stepped on a landmine, and when Kiril came back home, he first landed in a neurology ward and later in jail. And what was the fate of the two female prisoners of war in the archival footage from 2000?

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