Spring Breeze Snegurochka

The artist of Blade of the Immortal puts down his swords for a slow political drama set on the frozen edge of Stalin's Soviet Union in 1933. Bielka, a beautiful young woman who uses a wheelchair, and her taciturn companion Shchenok travel through a brutal winter landscape on a secret and very personal mission, hiding who they really are from a regime that punishes the wrong identity with death. There is no action in the usual Samura sense. The tension comes from surveillance, cold, and the constant risk of being seen. It is a careful, researched piece of historical fiction in a single volume.