Silent Souls

Water and love are the two gods worshipped by the Meri. According to Aist, the narrator of Silent Souls, the age-old culture of the Meri - a folk of Finnish origin - still lives on in the part of Russia where they once settled.
Aist, a factory worker with literary ambitions, is unsurprised when his boss asks him to take his dead wife to her last resting place. It’s the Meri way. With the body in the back of the car, the two men drive to the river where they will cremate her. Another typical Meri custom is 'smoking', in which the widower discusses his sex life with the deceased.
The camera work by Mikhail Krichman, who also worked for Andrei Zvyagintsev (The Return, The Banishment), is enchanting. Alexei Fedorchenko knows his Russian classics but also strikes a very personal tone in this beautiful and fateful drama that swings between absurdism, anthropology and deep-seated melancholy.