Sima looks into the camera — breaking the fourth wall — and says, “This is not an ending.”

The film cuts between harsh, handheld realism (snow, rusted barracks, indifferent officers) and tender flashbacks: Alyosha as a boy, catching dragonflies in a jar; Sima teaching him to peel potatoes; the last New Year’s Eve before he was drafted — a dance to an old cassette tape, his laugh like cracked ice.

“May syma” — that’s what he called her when he was small, mispronouncing “mama” into something only theirs.