Vasily Sigarev’s second feature, after his acclaimed Wolfy, is an existential portrait of protagonists living in a wintry Russian province. A mother wants to reunite with her twin daughters. A young couple marry in church, but immediately after the ceremony, God – or maybe the Devil, or maybe Blind Fate – tests their love in the most brutal way. A boy wants to see his estranged father, despite his mother’s violent protests. Each of these characters lives through their own ordeal.
Among all the sorrows imaginable, Sigarev focuses on the most devastating: death. Without any sentimentality, but with brutal sincerity, he has made a fiercely personal yet artistically crafted film on the complexity of being.
A prominent author of extremely truthful plays written in the tradition of ‘new drama’, Sigarev takes his art a few steps further by meticulously depicting the bleak routine of everyday life, while at the same time searching for something hidden beneath its surface. He tackles a fundamental question: Is there catharsis in life, and therefore in art? If so, can our sorrows be healed? And if not, how can one escape despair and go on living? An enigma that transforms this ‘realistic’ film into a universal parable, revealing a mystery and even – in spite of all the bleakness – a miracle.
Film details
- Country of production
- Russia
- Year
- 2012
- Festival edition
- IFFR 2012
- Length
- 119"
- Medium/Format
- 35mm
You may also like this
-
In April the Following Year, There Was a Fire
A poetic title, almost a film description, that demands some close reading. Just like the film, which – as a visual poem – doesn’t imme
-
De jueves a domingo
Scenes from a marriage, viewed from the back seat of the spacious Mazda 929 that a Chilean family uses to go on holiday for a couple of days. Sensi
-
Neighbouring Sounds
Meandering past the residents of a wealthy street in Recife, where private security guards ply their trade, this self-assured debut portrays the tw