RUSSIAN RESURRECTION FILM FESTIVAL
The 9th Russian Resurrection Film Festival celebrates new and classic cinema, giving you an opportunity to embark on a theatrical, political, romantic, supernatural and occasionally explosive journey to another country.
Russian Box Office hit Vysotskiy looks at the life, death and legend of Vladimir Vysotskiy, cultural hero in 1970s Soviet Union. Written by his son, this is a raw and authentic performance by Sergey Bezrukov – particularly when he takes to the stage and sings. In Home, the Shamanov family are four generations under one old and very remote roof. The crusty patriarch of this dysfunctional dynasty is superbly played by Bogdan Stupka – an intense and psychologically powerful drama with more than a touch of gunplay. The Admirer is a period romance about a high society wife called Lydia (the lovely Svetlana Ivanova) and her obsession with Anton Chekhov. Propriety thwarts their love but not Lydia’s passion, who tries to keep the consumptive writer alive through sheer force of will. For a different pace, there’s August 8th, where young single mum (again Svetlana Ivanova) sends her son on holiday with her estranged husband on his family’s farm. But when war breaks out, she embarks on a death-defying journey to save her son. Combining magical realism and spectacular special effects, this is an allegorical tale about the force of a mother’s love. War features again in White Tiger, set at the end of WWII, a Soviet tank man comes face to face with the White Tiger, a crewless and imperishable Nazi tank. But his near-death encounter leaves him with a supernatural understanding of the phantom-like machine. The Russian war film equivalent of Stephen King’s Christine. If you don’t fancy war stories, there are rom-coms too, such as the whimsical My Boyfriend is an Angel, a tale of love and heavenly interventions.
Aug 30-Sep 12, russianresurrection.com
