IT'S not often you can describe a film as an epic these days, but Russian Ark deserves the label.

Already being hailed as a defining achievement of modern cinema, the film infolds in a single, unbroken tracking shot, culminating in a pageant of colour, motion and music that radically reveals not only a particular landmark - St Petersburg's Hermitage, once the Winter Palace of the Tsars but now a vast museum - but also, staggeringly, an entire culture.

The film follows a stranger as he walks around and explores the Hermitage, and what follows is a celebration of Russia and her people and achievements.

Directed by Alexander Sokurov, the film is in Russian with English subtitles and features more than 800 actors. It's already being hailed as one of the must-see movies of the year.