Watch One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

In "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich," the film adaptation of Nobel laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's book, political prisoner Ivan and his fellow inmates are awakened before dawn somewhere in Siberia to confront subzero weather and hard labor once again. He's been inside a long time and knows the tricks to protect fingers and feet and get a few more morsels of food, and he has a few rules to live by. "In camp the squad leader is everything: a good one will give you a second life; a bad one will put you in your coffin," he notes. So with resourcefulness, he takes on a grueling day that is rather ordinary in the camp.

Solzhenitsyn drew on his time in dictator Josef Stalin's gulag to write the novella. Tom Courtenay, Espen Skjonberg and Alf Malland starred in the joint British-Norwegian movie production.