(2007, b/w; Octpob, Russian) "Have mercy on this sinner." A Russian tugboat in 1942 is boarded by Nazis who find a man by his coughing, hiding in a pile of coal; they beat him until he gives up his captain. After begging the enemy not to shoot him, the cringing man is given a pistol and ordered to shoot his captain, who tumbles overboard. As the Germans depart, leaving the sailor alone on the tug - realizing his remarkable good fortune, he shouts his bravado at his former assailants - a bomb detonates, sinking the Russian tub.

Forty-four years later director Pavel Lounguine's Bergmanesque film of mysticism resumes the story at a small Russian Orthodox monastery situated on an island. Aged, bearded, and bedraggled, Father Anatoly (Pyotr Mamonov), suffering from a chronic cough, hauls coal in a wheelbarrow from a shipwreck to feed the boiler's furnace; singing and repenting, pleading for God's forgiveness of his iniquities ("forsake me not"), praying for Capt Tikhon's salvation, he patiently listens to laypeople's petitions for spiritual help.

A young woman comes for a blessing to have an abortion because she says no one will want her if she has a baby; he tells her that no one would have her either way - it's preordained; predicting she will give birth to a son, he then shouts at her: "Get off my island!" Father Anatoly prophesizes, heals the lame, and raises the dead.

But when Father Job (Dmitry Dyuzhev), who is younger and somewhat condescending, makes an offer on behalf of their father superior to Anatoly of better accommodations for his health, the obstinate monk refuses and inquires of his literate brother: Why did Cain kill his brother Abel? Exasperated, Father Job reports to Father Superior Filaret (Victor Suhorukov) a litany of complaints against Father Anatoly: unwashed, late for work, behaving oddly including an improper manner of praying in church.

When a woman makes a request from Father Anatoly (not realizing that she is speaking to the locally revered holy man) for her departed husband, killed in the Great Patriotic War, Anatoly goes inside a closet where he speaks both sides of a dialogue, informing the wife that her husband is still alive in France: she is to sell everything and go find him. "Impossible!" she retorts, but he is insistent and certain of the man's being alive.

Later a mother brings her lame son to be healed, but after Father Anatoly prays for the boy and removes his crutches, saying she must remain over night with her child for the morrow's communion, she hesitates because she must return to her job. "Which is more important?" demands the monk, his mood shifting from New Testament charitableness to Old Testament ire and scorn, threatening retribution (her son a cripple for life) if she does not comply.

From a tower the prankster, as Father Filaret refers to Anatoly, drops a charred log at the father superior's feet; that evening the head monk's chambers catch fire. Father Filaret then takes temporary shelter with Father Anatoly, who throws the father superior's expensive boots into the boiler's furnace, closes the fresh-air vent to smoke out demons, and hurls a prized blanket, after stomping on it, into the water. Initially shocked by Anatoly's actions, Father Filaret then thanks the monk, realizing how "superficial and unnecessary" having such possessions is to living an authentically religious life.

"Why has God chosen me to lead the community?" asks Father Anatoly, convinced that he deserves hanging to sainthood. Father Filaret, attempting to console, reminds Anatoly: "There is no sin the Lord cannot pardon."

An admiral with his hysterical daughter Nastya arrives at the monastery, seeking cure of the young woman's insanity (her husband, a submariner, died at sea four years earlier) after finding no success with medical treatments. After Father Anatoly expels the demon who has taken possession of Nastya, his own heart feels filled with angels; he predicts his own imminent death.

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