Landscape

Colour, 35 mm
Germany, 2003, 60 min
Section: East of the West

Synopsis

The camera captures the uninviting appearance of a provincial town on a bitter winter day. Then it focuses on a growing crowd of young and old men and women with shopping and school kids. It slowly pans across their faces, registering the ever-changing pattern of those waiting. Snatches of conversation can be overheard. The gossip is about the diseases and deaths of neighbours and acquaintances, infidelities and divorces, trouble with bureaucracy and drunkards. Banal, unexciting words about grey lives leading grey existences. Everyone trudges along resigned, hemming and coughing, the young chewing gum in rapt concentration. Darkness descends. Modern buses finally pull up; the people get on in orderly fashion. The bleak space is brightened by a few cars and an old limping man pushing a bike in the slushy snow...

About the director

Sergei Loznitsa (b. 1964, Baranovichi, Belarus) graduated from the School of Applied Mathematics at Kiev Polytechnic (1987) and from Moscow’s Film School (VGIK, 1996). He created the documentaries Today We Are Going to Build a House (Segodnya my postroim dom, 1996), The Plaster Dictator (Diktator iz gipsa, 1998), Life, Autumn (Zhizn, osin, 1998), The Halt (Polustanok, 2000), The Settlement (Poselenie, 2001) and Portrait (Portret, 2002, Special Mention at Karlovy Vary 2003). A German production, the director shot Landscape (Landschaft, 2003) in the central Russian town of Okulovka.