You have grown out of us

"Testamus" Kantemir Balagova is the main discovery of Russian cinema 2017. Already in cinemas!

This debut film has already unmeasured awards from Cannes (a prize of the FIPRES) to Kinotavra (the best debut). Cannes criticism wrote about the opening of a new territory on a map of world cinema-Kabardino-Balkaria. But that is not the point.

The student of Alexander Sokurov - the heir in a straight line, handwriting from his master, was the main thing. Take a look at our life with a rare understanding for modern Russian cinema, sensitivity, pain. To convey the defenselessness of an individual before the indestructible circumstances of the “place and time of action”.

Balagov is scrupulous in the designation of the era. 1998. Nalchik. The trouble in a Jewish family - the youngest son and his bride disappear. The amount of the ransom is overwhelmed, the family is forced not only to sell a small business, but also to seek help from the commune.

This story was told to the director by his father, who lived in Nalchik and talked with the local Jewish diaspora. Therefore, the film is distinguished by a subjective author’s look: in the credits (“My name is Kantemir Balagov. This story happened ...”), in the image. For example, in the first frame, the camera looks from the underground up, then it turns out that this is not from Zindan, but from the automobile pit. But even further the feeling of a close, hostile world will be strengthened by color (many red, blue, the main characters have their own color “leitmotifs”, many dark “alarmed” personnel), a cash in a cable screen, “close” with a camera squeezed into a compressed space.

The metaphor of a narrow, devoid of air of space is almost physically felt in almost every episode. People live in small-sized literally on each other's heads, they wear a boar and jackets with wide shoulders (according to the fashion of the 90s). Clothing is spacious, and the relationship is intra -family, intra -communal - too cramped, do not allow you to breathe. They compress, file individuality under the unified blank "like everyone else." Parents say to the children: “You have grown out of us”, as if a child has grown over last year’s dress - the knees stick out, narrowly in the shoulders - not turn around.

The criminal line of Kidneping is weaving with the plot of moral choice. In fact, for the sake of collecting funds, the family is forced to sacrifice one child for the sake of another. The theme of the victim is the internal plot of the film. Unbearable video frames of the murder of Russian soldiers during the Chechen war (they cut the throat as cattle). The chronicle is considered with interest, argue about the justification of cruelty in relation to the invaders. And it seems, war, violence close to the TV, dropped into reality dropped.

According to the plot, the older sister of Ilan should be made for the voluntary sacrifice for the sake of the brother. She is not only a semantic, but emotional center of narrative. Daria Zhovner with her vital, boiling temperament, an amazing and strange face, paradoxical reactions - a real discovery.

The most important and relevant is the conflict between medieval foundations and spraying through the edge of the one permitted by youth, seething with hormones and a thirst for life: not tomorrow - now.

And I don't want to leave. And to live at home sadly, cloudy, and anxious.

In "crowding" - a high tension current, the unpredictability of life, sharply tangible at the breakdown of eras. This is an exciting journey in the 90s, confused, dangerous, drivers. In a dense soundtrack - “music tied us up”: a disc “virus” crying Bulanova. The author’s gaze is deprived of benevolence, but attentive, a bit and sympathetic in relation to people trying to preserve human qualities and fragile connections in a humiliating, hopeless impasse of lawlessness.

Even the family seems to be a “hot point”, in which loved ones painfully wipe each other through the concrete of foundations, ruled, education. Wound, sacrificing each other and for themselves for the sake of an uncertain future. But on the other hand, it is the family that turns out to be unstable, passing water, but the last raft in the worldwide flood of hostility.