East of the West - Competition 2003 / Zmej / Russia 2002
An impersonal testimony about the routine existence of a military executioner motivated by the money he needs for his paralysed son’s operation. This timeless drama is immersed in a suggestive documentary-style atmosphere set in the Russian provinces. It also tells of the moral and emotional desensitisation of today’s population.
A day in the life of an officer, an executioner from a nearby prison. He gets up at dawn, has breakfast, reprehends his wife for over-spending, takes out the trash and sees to his paralysed son. In the prison he hears the verdict on a condemned man whose mind fills with incongruous memories of his life. The fatal shot is followed by a prescribed glass of vodka; the man sees prisoners marching in a line and feels compassion for them. He passes by a parked van and returns home by bus. The man sees the corpse loaded into a van. Later he fulfils a promise he made to his son, tied to a wheelchair. They go out to fly a kite. The idyll is thwarted by a street urchin who pushes the wheelchair over and calls the boy a cripple. The man brutally beats up the young bully’s drunken father. In the evening he writes an application to extend his work contract since he needs money for his son’s operation. As he falls asleep, the van speeds through the darkness. This cheerless and detached testimony emerges from a gentle night-time image of a courtyard nestling between housing estates. Dogs are howling, a drunkard sleeps on a bench. The audiovisual documentary feel of the film evokes a suggestive atmosphere without specifying the setting of the drama itself. The filmmaker deliberately surrenders judgement on his work in the spirit of a confession – don’t judge and you will not be judged. The Cottbus Film Festival is honored to present The Kite, awarded the Ecumenical Jury Prize at Cottbus 2002, in the East of the West section.
75 min / Color, 35 mm
Director Aleksei Muradov
/ Screenplay Aleksej Muradov / Aleksei Muradov, Jurij Solodov / Yuri Solodov
/ Dir. of Photography Robert Filatov
/ Editor Aleksej Muradov / Aleksei Muradov, Robert Filatov
/ Producer Jevgenija Tirdatovová / Evgenia Tirdatova, Aleksej Muradov / Aleksei Muradov, Robert Filatov, Pjotr Černjajev / Piotr Cherniaiev
/ Production Kinoglaz, koprodukce / coproduction: M2F
/ Cast Viktor Solovjov / Viktor Solovyov, Naděžda Ozerova / Nadezhda Ozerova, Pavel Zolotilin / Pavel Zolotilin, Michail Paznikov/ Mikhail Paznikov, Žeňja Solochin / Zhenya Solokhin, Dmitrij Koškin / Dmitiy Koshkin, Andrej Abrosimov / Andrei Abrosimov, Alexander
/ Contact Kinoglaz
Aleksei Muradov (b. 1963) graduated from the directing department of the Moscow Cultural Institute (1986). He worked as a director of a circus clown routine, then directingvarious TV programmes. In 2002 he graduated from an advanced film directing course, headed by Alexei German. He made his debut The Kite (Zmej, 2002) in a coproduction with his director of photography Robert Filatov. Over the last year The Kite was screened at over thirty IFFs, and won thirteen domestic and international awards. As “Discovery of the Year” the film was nominated for a Felix Prize. Muradov is currently representing Russia at the European Film Academy. He recently completed his film The Truth about Goblins (Pravda o shchelpakh) about the fatal inability to adapt to society and the infantile self-sufficiency of three forty-year-olds from the Urals.
Kinoglaz
Krasnopresnenskaya nab. 1/2 - 129, 123100, Moscow
Russia
Phone: +7 495 205 0658
Fax: +7 495 205 0658
E-mail: [email protected]
Evgenia Tirdatova
Festival Organizer, Producer
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