Meek farmhand Sasha and policeman Dima have a fraught relationship. They’re brothers-in-law, travel companions, and—secretly—lovers. Over the course of their journey to visit Sasha’s grandmother, unspoken truths are uttered, intimacy is built, and authenticity is challenged. Although they may be far from the peering eyes of their oppressive society, their relationship teeters on a dangerous precipice. Selected and supported by the IFP Filmmaker Lab and destined to evoke both the breathtaking landscapes of BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN and the tragedy of a Dostoevsky novel, Viatcheslav Kopturevskiy’s auspicious debut drama is an elliptical and much-needed examination of internalized homophobia, repression, and identity in a remote Siberian town.
ynopsis from Time Out Film Guide Between the seemingly idyllic opening and closing scenes depicting a rural community, first at church, then at the village festival, Fleischmann attacks that community's prejudices and ignorance without remorse. His very precisely observed portrait of Bavarian life begins with little more than a display of the villagers' constant ribbing, bawdy humour, continuous gossip, and more than a hint of their slow-wittedness. With the return of a young man, their idle malice and childish clowning, always on the edge of unpleasantness, receive some focus quite without foundation, the lad is victimised as a homosexual. The crippling conformity of their ingrained conservatism leads the villagers to reject anything 'different' a young widow is ostracised, more for her crippled lover and idiot son than her morals; a teacher is frozen out because she's educated; the casual destruction of the young 'homosexual' is given no more thought than the cutting up of a pig. Not Germany in the '30s but the '70s; nevertheless the political parallels are clear. An impressive film.
