Acid, Crampedness and Other Substances: the Best Debuts of the New Russian Cinema
The last five years have convincingly proved that contemporary Russian cinema is alive and well. Not as an exception, not as a marginality, but as an important fact of our culture. This is especially noticeable in bright openings. Some help us to see from our side, some thunder to the whole world. We remember the luck that surprised everyone.
"Closeness", dir. Kantemir Balagov, 2017
The debut of Kantemir Balagov is a triumph of a very young student Alexander Sokurov, a Cannes sensation, the FIPRESCI prize in the "Unusual View" program. The story told in Tightness is both recognizable and very exotic. Exotic, because the focus is on the traditional Jewish family in Ingushetia. Everyday life, about which the inhabitants of Russia, and even more so in the West, know little, both here an...