The film is set on the Kola Peninsula, where car mechanic Kolya and his family live in a remote part of a neglected seaport. The house and the land it stands on are coveted by the mayor of the nearby town. Kolya’s determination to defend his property with the help of a lawyer from Moscow, a childhood friend, has tragic consequences. The story reflects the reality that potentates in contemporary Russia are just as cynical and ruthless as they were in the past. The film won Best Screenplay at Cannes.
The new film by one of Russia’s most prominent contemporary filmmakers is set in the far northwest of the country, near the border with Finland. On the rocky shore stands the house where Kolia lives with his second wife and young son from a previous marriage. A dispute with the mayor of a nearby town, who wants to purchase the house and surrounding land, is supposed to be handled by a lawyer from Moscow, a childhood friend. Kolia’s determination to resist pressure from the speculator leads to tragedy. We are given a depressing image of the supremacy of modern Russia’s potentates, who are just as cynical and brutal as in the past – only the circumstances are different. The characters have little to hope for in their bleak lives, their destiny prefigured in the shots of the derelict seaport with its boat wrecks and in a whale skeleton protruding from the water. Nevertheless, the film gives over to moments of sarcasm and black humour, through which the screenplay by Oleg Negin and Andrey Zvyagintsev bluntly characterises a decaying system of government.
141 min / Color, DCP
Director Andrey Zvyagintsev
/ Screenplay Oleg Negin, Andrey Zvyagintsev
/ Dir. of Photography Mikhail Krichman
/ Music Philip Glass
/ Editor Anna Mass
/ Producer Alexander Rodnyansky, Sergey Melkumov
/ Production Non-Stop Production
/ Cast Alexey Serebryakov, Elena Lyadova, Vladimir Vdovitchenkov, Roman Madyanov
/ Contact Pyramide International, Film Europe s.r.o.
/ Distributor Film Europe s.r.o.
Andrey Zvyagintsev (b. 1964, Novosibirsk, USSR) studied acting at the Novosibirsk Drama School (1984) and also at Moscow’s GITIS (Russian University of Theatre Arts, 1990). As an actor he featured in several stage productions, and he has appeared in episodic roles in TV series and has also been cast in films, e.g. Shirli-Myrli (1995 – KVIFF 1996). He gave his debut as a director in 2003 with the feature film The Return (Vozvrashcheniye), which won the Golden Lion in Venice and was hailed as European Discovery of the Year in 2003. The lead in his next film The Banishment (Izgnanie) won Best Actor in the main competition at Cannes 2007. His subsequent films Elena (2011) and Leviathan (2014) also won awards at Cannes.
Pyramide International
32 rue de l’Echiquier, 750 10, Paris
France
Phone: +33 142 960 220
Fax: +33 140 200 551
E-mail: [email protected]
Film Europe s.r.o.
Matuškova 10, 831 01, Bratislava
Slovakia
E-mail: [email protected]
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