Transit

Colour, 35 mm
Russia, 2006, 146 min
IP – International premiere
Section: Official Selection - Competition

Synopsis

The wartime winter of 1942–1943. A military airstrip in inhospitable Chukotka is the setting for an encounter between three civilisations, and a bizarre tangle of human destinies. Fighters piloted by elegant Americans arrive here from Alaska, and barely trained Russian youngsters transport them to the front. Their naive friendliness upsets the vigilant local bosses, while the transit flights are ruining the local hunters. In the interests of allied protocol, political deportees are even allowed on the base: a famous design engineer is here as a cook, and a neurologist grows vegetables in a greenhouse. The former wife of a fanatical commander works here as an interpreter and takes care of a wonderfully equipped library. Fleeting passions meld together humanity and cruelty, unconditional, like love and death. What was the truth of what happened here, and what was illusion? A lot of things become clear only years later, in the year of Stalin’s death....

About the director

Alexander Rogozhkin (1949, Leningrad, USSR), studied history, theory of art and graphics at Leningrad State University, and after working as a scenographer at Lenfilm studied direction at VGIK (1977–82). He made the important films For a Few Lines (Radi neskolkich strochek, 1985), The Guard (Karaul, 1986), The Chekist (Chekista, 1991), and Act (Akt, 1993), all produced by Lenfilm. His films Life with an Idiot (Zhizn s idiotom, 1993), and the ironic comedies Peculiarities of the National Hunt (Osobennosti natsionalnoi okhoty, 1995) and Peculiarities of the National Hunt in Winter (Osobennosti natsionalnoi okhoty v zimniy period, 2000), have been screened at the Karlovy Vary Festival, where he also won best Director for his Chechen War drama Checkpoint (Blokpost, 1998) and praise for his philosophical treatment of the Soviet-Finnish War Cuckoo (Kukushka, 2002). His Transit (Peregon, 2006) is also an unusual evocation of conditions during the 2nd World War.