Yakutia, the 1930s. Old Mikipper and his wife Oppuos live their days in thick taiga. Cows, hunting, fishing make up the simple everyday life of the old people. Once early in the winter an eagle flies into their garden. The old people dare no drive it away because eagles are sacred.Read More »
This is a film from Yakutia (AKA Sakha republic, part of Russian Federation). There exist separate film industry producing movies on a regular basis. Most of them, including this one, are on the native yakut language. These movies have local screenings in cinemas of the region, sometimes they also have some presentation on russian and international film festivals. This film in particular was shown at Busan International Film Festival 2016 and imagineNATIVE Film & Media Arts Festival 2016 in Canada where it wan «Best Feature Drama» award. It was also nominated for APSA- Asia Pacific Screen Award.
When a young man kills his cousin in an accident he is overcome with guilt and, in his grief, commits suicide. His father Ignat, a responsible and devout widower, is left reeling and seeks redemption for his son’s actions. He meets a neglected boy and finds comfort looking after him. But the father of the boy who was killed becomes intoxicated with revenge.Read More »
When Victor’s wife dies and his world falls into a deep slumber, he sets out to wander the empty streets on his own. Struggling to cope with his loss, Victor endures an overwhelming experience that leads him to insanity and murder but through which he ultimately makes peace with himself.Read More »
Lyrical drama about the last pre-war summer of three sisters who came to her grandmother in the village. The world appears to them is a huge and beautiful “garden of desires”, all eagerly awaiting the birth of Asi, which does not leave a premonition of impending disaster.Read More »
Synopsis
Ivanna, a 26-year-young Nenets mother of five children, is living in the Arctic region in the northwest Siberia. She lives a traditional nomadic life, driving her herd of reindeer at the tundra like her family did for centuries. But due to the environmental side effects of the climate change most of her reindeers are dying and she know that she will soon be ruined and forced to make a dramatic decision. Her husband, Gena, has already left the family. He moved to the city, hoping to find a job as an oilworker in the Russian oil fields but didn’t succeed and spend his time drinking and fighting. Ivanna is willing to give her marriage a last chance. She will give up her traditional life, leave the tundra, move to the city and get a job at Gazprom. But time has changed, Gena became violent and alcoholic and Ivanna realizes that the civilized city life is not what she expected. But there are no way back, Ivanna will have to take life in her own hands and secure a future for her and her five children. The film follows Ivanna and her family closely for four years through her dramatic lifechanges, from the harsh life at the tundra to the modern life in the Siberian city of Norilsk.Read More »
A story of jealous love and betrayal that end up decimating a small group of outcaste lepers who have been banished from participation in Yakut community life.Read More »
Synopsis
The story begins when a young man with a head injury is released from the hospital and begins searching modern-day St. Petersburg for a room or a place to stay.Read More »
Quote:
The Russian film “The Return” is a stunning contemporary fable about a divided family in the wilderness – a simple, riveting film that almost achieves greatness.
In this hypnotic, stark movie, which won the Golden Lion (grand prize) of the last Venice Film Festival, we see a family strangely reunited: a father and his two sons traveling by car through the countryside after a 12-year separation. One of the boys, Andrei (the late Vladimir Garin), is obedient. The other younger son, Ivan (Ivan Dobronravov), is surly and rebellious.Read More »
Russian journalist and human rights activist Anna Politkovskaya was killed in Moscow in October, 2006. In 2004, she had written: “Society has shown limitless apathy… We are hurtling back into a Soviet abyss, into an information vacuum that spells death from our own ignorance.” and of her own pessimism: “the ‘optimistic’ forecast… is the death sentence for our grandchildren.” [Putin’s Russia (2004)]Read More »