We Live at the Edge

Colour, 35mm
Belarus, 2002, 22 min
Section: Documentary Films in Competition

Synopsis

A village on a steep bank eroded almost symbolically by the river. The houses are also being worn away and the village is ever becoming more sparsely populated. The young leave, the old die, the cemetery across the river fills up, but no-one ever goes there to pay his or her respects. The old must take care of themselves but cannot manage without their own hard work. A flotilla of barges comes to transport the livestock from the pasture lands. Old women are at the oars. They are the ones who contemplate their lot in life, and the wretched state of their region. Not only has a foul Chernobyl wind blown through it, but other calamities trouble it as well: the waning of tradition and the collapse of a morality which once governed their small world teetering on the edge of civilisation. And, indeed, they themselves now have matured to the very edge of life. But part of the world’s order dictates that people fade while nature endures with its daily round of sunrise and sunset on the river, creating a rhythm by which their existence and sense of life’s beauty have been defined.

About the director

Victor Asliuk graduated from the Belarus Academy of Arts in 1994. He has some fascinating titles to his name, such as Tears of the Prodigal Son, Forgotten Heavens (1996), Eternal Subject (1997), Good Evening, Garden, Garden (1998). In 2000 competed in the Documentary Film Competition at the 35th Karlovy Vary IFF with the film Andrew’s Stone.