Vaarwel Pavel

The Russian journalist Alexei Petrov is laying on his bed in a shabby hotel room in Rotterdam. Exhausted and still wearing his overcoat. The hotel landlady hands him the phone.’A telephone call from Russia. Your son is waiting!’ By the roadside facing the hotel a grey Mercedes parks. The journalist suspects this is no coincidence, because he is researching Russian freighters that have been impounded in the Port of Rotterdam and writes about trafficking in women. When he helped a Russian prostitute who appeald to him to get a forged passport, he became increasingly involved in murky affairs.The story is set in two cities. In Rotterdam we follow Alexei and in St Petersburg his 14-year-old son Pavel, who is worried about his father. Events in both cities run more or less parallel, until a startling shift in time becomes apparent. For Pavel, who is growing up, time passes rapidly, while for Alexei, who feels increasingly threatened, time stands still. Far from home, Alexei is lying motionless and apparently paralysed on the bed of his hotel room in Rotterdam. In St Petersburg the first snow falls.The latest film by scriptwriter and film-maker Rosemarie Blank tells fragments of a story and shows different perceptions of time.