Acclaimed actor Bob Hoskins made a striking directorial debut with this curiously captivating fable that plays freely with gender, fantasy, and magic. Stationed somewhere in Eastern Europe, a young soldier (Dexter Fletcher) defects after his sergeant is killed in battle. Shell-shocked, mute, and disguised in women’s clothing, he joins a traveling Romani caravan (with Hoskins himself playing the band’s leader) after they mistake him for a “rawney”—a vagabond female mystic able to foresee the future.
