Sochi 2008

From Russia, With Love
Klaus Eder Finds New Trends in Russian Cinema

"Yuri's Day" (Kirill Serebrennikov)

"Shultes" (Bakur Bakuradze)

In six years' time, the Russian city of Sochi — located at the eastern shore of the Black Sea — will host the 2014 Olympic Winter Games. Today, it's a sleepy resort, with a just national airport only (all routes lead to Moscow), and crowded at best by tourists — especially Russians, for whom the city seems to hold an attraction. In June, Sochi is visibly dominated by the "Kinotavr Open Russian Film Festival", an immense cultural event featuring nightly open-air screenings on one of the city's central spaces, in front of the Winter Theater, opposite one of the major hotels. The theater and the hotel constitute the festival's major venues. The screenings are always packed.

The Kinotavr Festival has a varied history. For several years, it ran as an international event; now, headed by producer Igor Tolstunov and program director Sitora Alieva, it's Russia's most important national festival, and an annual showcase for the country's productions. It's attended by foreign guests, critics and festival scouts, and accompanied by numerous discussions and panels. If you want to get up to speed on the state of affairs of Russian cinema, this is the place. Sochi in June is a remarkable meeting point of Russian cinema.

As the festival informed us, 130 films were submitted for this year's 19th edition; 15 films were selected for the competition. If the selections reflect the contemporary state of Russian cinema, at least roughly, a few interesting conclusions can be drawn.

Russian Magic ("Yuri's Day")

First, a generational change seems to be underway. Only a few veteran filmmakers presented new works: Alexander Proshkin, Vitali Mansky, Alexei Uchitel. On the other hand, among the 15 competition films were six debut features and three sophomore efforts, marking an astonishing increase of newcomers and demonstrating a gratifying interest in young cinema — both on the festival's part and on that of Russian producers. The boom signals the arrival of a new generation of young filmmakers who came of age at the end of the Soviet era, or weren't even born until the 1980s. It's the first post-Soviet generation without any emotional links to the old days and its imposed aesthetic and political standards. These new filmmakers are free to choose the stories they want to tell, and free to use whatever styles they want.

And do they use this privilege?

Well, yes and no; the answer isn't that easy. In her introduction to the festival catalogue, program director Alieva writes that contemporary cinema "is characterized by activity rather than by talent", meaning that it's possible — and even easier than it used to be — for amateurs to raise money and to shoot a movie without any previous experience; conversely, it's more and more difficult for professionals to find funding for their films. "Many of those who didn't make it into the competition", continues Alieva, "have no relation to the art or even the craft of filmmaking, copying templates and schemes of primitive television films."

The Sochi films did indeed display disparate visions. There were attempts to make commercial entertainments, like Alexander Melnik's Terra Nova (Novaya semliya). There were typical art-house movies, such as Uchitel's Captive (Plenni), about two soldiers and their prisoner during the Chechen war — the same story as Sergei Bodrov's Prisoner of the Mountains (Kavkazskiy Plennik). There were films about today's youth, like Mansky's Virginity (Devstvennost). None of them was particularly convincing, nor did any of them offer new thematic or aesthetic perspectives. On the contrary; seeing the recent productions, one felt it difficult to get one's bearings.

During the Soviet era — not that I am using this as a positive — there were strict standards, which artists could follow or subvert; at least they provided a point of reference. They haven't been replaced by new values, nor by a new understanding of the role of cinema in society. As a result, today's Russian cinema seems to be the business of loners, or independents; with a little luck, they make it to the theaters, or to one of the international festivals, where Russian cinema has largely been conspicuously absent in recent years, with few exceptions.

"Virginity" (Vitali Mansky)

"Captive" (Alexei Uchitel)

"Nirvana" (Igor Voloshin)

Additionally, Russian filmmakers can no longer count on government support from the Ministry of Culture — even though the state-owned studio systems are still very much in operation, Mosfilm and Gorki-Studio in Moscow, Lenfilm in Saint Petersburg. These old governmental structures of production and distribution are slowly running out of juice, losing their importance, while new structures have yet to be established. This state of affairs provided more than enough material for passionate discussions in Sochi.

With Love from Russia, or Turn to the West?

One of the key questions and contradictions under discussion was posed by two films in the program: Kirill Serebrennikov's Yuri's Day (Yuryev Den), a film that consciously reaches back to old Russian traditions, and Bakur Bakuradze's Shultes, which consciously follows Western art-house standards. Does Russian cinema need to open itself to a Western point of view, or even an international one, or would it be better advised to reflect on Russian history, society or culture? Does national cinema have a chance of surviving, or must it become international?

At the beginning of Yuri's Day, Lyubov (Kseniya Rappoport), an opera singer, shows her son her ancestral home, a remote village covered in deep snow. She is saying farewell to this place, because she intends to take her career abroad, to Germany or Switzerland. But after a visit to an old monastery, the son disappears. He doesn't return that evening, nor in the following days. Lyubov, a beautiful, successful, self-confident and even self-important woman, grows nervous, anxious and hysterical, progressing over the following days and weeks almost into madness: It's the psychologically understandable reaction of a mother desperate to find her missing child.

A Western psychological drama would have ended here, after having presented a more or less credible explanation for the boy's disappearance. But for Kirill Serebrennikov, this is merely a prelude to another, very different story — that of a woman who slowly loses her identity and adopts, step by step, the identity of a local woman, part of the local society. (The most visible sign of this transformation is that Lyubov loses her voice and colors her hair.) This goes well beyond Western rationalist understanding and control. It's connected to a Russian mythology: The magic and power of religion (specifically, Christianity); the contradiction between individual and collective; the sense of time and space. Unfortunately, the film does not narrate this in a coherent way, it lacks an internal rhythm, taking too long to establish its own reality. The basic idea however — to refer to a Russian feeling and experience of the world — this is captivatingly clear.

In Shultes, Bakur Bakuradze focuses on a young man, played by Gela Chitava. We follow his uneventful life in Moscow for a few days, in long takes and a minimalist way of narration. He's a taciturn man, about whom we don't learn much. Gradually, it's revealed that he's recently survived some sort of car accident, and suffers now from at least partial memory loss, resulting in the loss of his identity. But in the subway, he discovers a considerable skill at pickpocketing.

From a Western point of view, this man, Lyosha Shultes, can easily be interpreted as a metaphor for the cold social climate of today's Russia — the lack of communication, the social loneliness. (Indeed, these elements seem to be more important to the movie than the question of Shultes' identity.) Perhaps this is the sort of movie Western festival audiences and art-house patrons expect to see about today's Russia, a representative cliché more than an excursion into real life, particularly because Bakuradze uses the minimalist language of a Kaurismäki or a Béla Tarr — and indeed, Shultes had its world premiere not in Sochi but in Cannes, at the Directors' Fortnight, earlier this year. It's nonetheless an impressive film which merited the main prize in Sochi.

Shultes is a film a Western audience may expect from Russia. But Yuri's Day, whether or not it proves a success on the international market, offers an unexpected perspective on the country. It will be interesting to see which of the two films will find favor at other international festivals. Both films — and perhaps two or three others from the Sochi program — could raise interest on an international level. Finally, that's good news.

Klaus Eder
© FIPRESCI 2008

Klaus Eder writes on film for "Bayerischer Rundfunk" and other public radio stations, as well as for German-language film magazines. He also curates German film series for the Goethe Institute. He lives and works in Munich, Germany.

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