Wolfy

Colour, 35 mm
Russia, 2009, 86 min
IP – International premiere
Section: Official Selection - Competition

Synopsis

The opening scene of the film lets us know that the baby girl just being born is unwelcome. The cries of the laboring woman are more about anger than pain, and nothing would lead us to believe that she is looking forward to her little girl. That’s how things remain between Mother and Daughter, and that’s why they remain nameless. Their life together constitutes Mother’s constant flights into the arms of men whom she leads into the one room in the house, where the grandmother at least provides the child with a minimum of care. Daughter soon understands who Mother is, and although she condemns her, she can’t live without her. The vicious cycle of their wasted lives is reminiscent of a spinning top (a ‘wolf’ in Russian), the one toy in Daughter’s life, the one thing which connects her to Mother. Vassily Sigarev, whose feature debut is an adaptation of his own theater play, has set this harrowing story of indifference in a timeless space that, moreover, lacks a concrete physical location. "In my plays, I try never to say ‘this is what it’s about.’ Let viewers decide for themselves. I just hope that the story tells them something new about love and its absence, about evil – and about their own souls.”

About the director

Vassily Sigarev (b. 1977, Central Urals, Russia) studied education before taking courses in dramaturgy from Nikolay Kolyada. He drew international attention in 2002 when his play Plasticine was staged at London’s Royal Court Theatre. The play was a great success and Sigarev took the Charles Wintour Prize for Most Promising Playwright. Since 2003 he has written 18 plays that have been staged at many theaters in Russia and abroad, including in the Czech Republic (Plasticine played at Prague’s DISK theater in 2004 and Sigarev came for the performance). He transformed his play Wolfy into his feature directorial debut, and the film took the top award at the 2009 Kinotavr festival of Russian films in Sochi.