Small in scale and antiwar in subject, Tangerines is the kind of story that almost always gets called a fable. Most such projects can get gooey about how we’re really all brothers under the skin, and this one is no exception—it was one of this year’s Oscar nominees for Best Foreign Language Film, after all. But even if this theme is low-hanging fruit, the movie is so well made and acted that it quietly wins the day.
Tangerines officially represented Estonia at the Oscars, but it is set in another part of the world: Abkhazia, a fragment of the old Soviet Union.