The Bottomless Bag

For his new film, the legendary Russian filmmaker and artist Rustam Khamdamov adapted Ryūnosuke Akutagawa’s In a Grove (1922), a classic short story which had already inspired Akira Kurosawa’s masterpiece Rashomon (1950). Khamdamov sets this story of the unknowability of truth within a frame story that takes place at the Court of Czar Alexander II. A female courtier, played by iconic Russian film star ​Svetlana Nemolyaeva, tells the czar a fairy tale about his son’s murder, and we see three different versions of this event. Which is true?

The Bottomless Bag, shot in stunning, radiant black-and-white and named after one of the stories in A Thousand and One Nights, takes place by turns at the Court, in palatial rooms and in a grove where the murder takes place. Khamdamov loads his narrative with references to European culture and silent cinema as well as Russian mythology. Baba Yaga – a witch from Russian legends – is played by tragedienne Alla Demidova. Exuberant and ironic, this film is like a magic box, full of secrets, dreams and truly cinematic jewels.

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