At the Venice Film Festival, Russian obscenities were tired

This year there were no Russian films at the festival, although no one formally canceled the participation of independent projects. Because of the special operation, only the official Russian delegation and films made with state support were denied participation. And at the Biennale of Contemporary Art these days the Russian pavilion is literally locked up.

Nevertheless, films shot in Russian took part in the program of the film festival. These are the editing film “The Kyiv Trial” by Sergei Loznitsa, based on archival documents, including the Krasnogorsk Film Archive, “Mountain Bow” by Eldar Shibanov from Kazakhstan, the last film by Kim Ki-duk “God’s Call”, filmed in Kyrgyzstan. In the “Venetian Classics” they showed “Bro” by the Tajik director Bakhtiyor Khudoynazarov, which was filmed at the end of the USSR and also in Russian.

The French-American “Couple” by Frederic Weissman about Leo Tolstoy’s correspondence with his wife Sophia participates in the main competition. The Russian theme unexpectedly surfaced in the Italian film of the main competition “The Ant Lord” by Gianni Amelio, which tells how the philosopher, poet, sculptor and artist Aldo Braibanti was sentenced to nine years in 1968, accused of homosexual intercourse. His father sent his victim to electrotherapy, and the guy eventually lost his mind. The film begins with footage from the Soviet film The Cranes Are Flying by Mikhail Kalatozov, shown on a big screen in a summer cafe in Rome. The heroine of Tatyana Samoilova makes her way through the crowd, and the hero of Alexei Batalov, leaving for the front, is looking for his beloved Squirrel with his eyes. This quote looks strange, but later the Russian theme will be continued.

A journalist from the communist newspaper Yumanite, who speaks Russian well, will meet representatives of the Soviet delegation, talk with its representative, whose chest is adorned with a star, which was worn on caps. The lady will ask why Comrade Braibanti is suffering. But when he finds out that he “loved boys”, he will shy away like hell from incense. And a journalist who writes on a typewriter a text in an issue about a high-profile trial will be stopped by the editor-in-chief: they say, there is no need to write anything else – we work in a newspaper representing the interests of the Communist Party.

In the documentary film “On a Journey” by one of the most significant Italian documentary filmmakers Gianfranco Rosi, who captured the travels around the world of Pope Francis, from 2013 to 2022 – from Lampedusa to Kenya and the Philippines, shows a meeting with Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia on Cuba in 2016. Rosie himself filmed only the recent voyage of his hero to Canada, but mostly he used archival materials in the film. The director did not meet his hero, but his picture creates a powerful image of a long-suffering planet.

Venice has always shown interest in Russian cinema. Not a single festival could do without it lately. A year ago, Russia was represented there by “Captain Volkonogov fled” by Natasha Merkulova and Alexei Chupov about our totalitarian past. The film was not released in Russian distribution.

“Goliath” by Adilkhan Yerzhanov is included in the recently appeared competition program “New Horizons”, designed to discover new names and support new trends. Its jury consists only of the audience, who choose the best film. In total, nine films participate in the program. Adilkhan is a laureate and participant of many international film festivals, including Cannes, Venice, Rotterdam. His film “Yellow Cat” two years ago participated in the “Horizons” program in Venice and was nominated from Kazakhstan for the “Oscar” award. In 2019, Yerzhanov was awarded the Asian Oscar in Australia. Recently, he began to work actively in Russia.

Russian cinematographers took part in the production of Goliath, in particular Natalya Drozd, known for Coupe Number Six, filmed jointly with Finnish colleagues and participating in the main program of the Cannes Film Festival and nominated by Finland for an Oscar. One of the roles in “Goliath” was played by Russian actress Alexandra Revenko, who had already worked with Adilkhan on his Kazakh-Russian “Storm”.

The film begins with a brutal scene where hefty guys hit each other to amazing Kazakh male vocals. The poor Arzu, whose wife died, was played in Goliath by an excellent Kazakh actor Berik Aitzhanov. The hero almost does not speak and does not hear, does not react to anything after the army shell shock. As in Shorma, in The Plague in the Village of Karatas, Collective Immunity, the action takes place in the fictional and hard-to-reach village of Karatas, a kind of conditional space that is not tied to anything in particular, but has become flesh and blood of the infamous image of Russian Kuschevka. This is a kind of allegory of the world, its model, which has absorbed the events taking place in Kazakhstan, Russia – everywhere. Life in Karatas is terrible, cruel. The head of security, played by Dmitry Chebotarev, says that everyone is stealing here, no one will notice – such a flow of money is coming.

The village is kept in fear by the criminal authority Poshaev, whose role was played by Daniyar Alshinov. His gang does not allow people to live normally. People are disappearing in Karatas, already 15 people are missing, and this is the work of Pashayev. At the same time, he, speaking for truth and justice, comes to lawlessness. But the locals even idolize him, because he forces out strangers, gives work to his own. When foreigners come to Karatas ready to sign a contract for mining, Pashayev will scare them so that they will quickly fly away. He wants justice, trades to the last for a 100% share in the profits, does not agree to the proposed terms. They say so in Karatas: “If it weren’t for Pashayev, you wouldn’t all be working here.” All power is in truth – exactly according to the formula of Danila Bagrov by Balabanov. Strength is respected everywhere. When the guard tries to take possession of other people’s property and is caught, he will say in defense: “I love Pashayev. I just wanted to buy a refrigerator. I’ll give you money.”

Pashayev and Arzu take care of. He is a valuable shot for him – he went through the war, shoots accurately. According to Adilkhan Yerzhanov, he was interested in the nature of power and subordination, the clash of a small and defenseless person with someone who has power. Pashayev’s shift is growing up. A chubby teenager imitates him in everything, ready to deal with a defeated person who cannot answer him, give him. The protagonist is eventually expelled from Karatas. Lame, deaf, with a little daughter, he will be left on an empty road, not knowing where to go.

Alexandra Revenko played a young woman whose husband is in prison. She has already forgotten what he looks like, and therefore asks Arzu if he remembers the face of his wife and if they can “really live together” with him. And he still remembers how snow fell on his wife’s hair and for some reason did not melt when they first met. Perhaps this is the most perfect picture from the Karatas cycle.

Over the course of two years, Adilkhan rewrote the script to maintain a balance between genre cinema and art research, realizing the risk of such a connection, which may simply not be perceived properly. And although the action takes place in a meager landscape – a lonely house stands in the steppe, a well-worn Soviet “loaf” – the picture is distinguished by a bright visual solution, thanks to the talented work of cameraman Aidar Sharipov and production designer Yermek Utegenov. Everything is very beautifully filmed – a herd in the steppe, a snow-white quarry, the figures of praying men at the grave of a dead woman. Machiavelli’s quotes divide the film into chapters. Everything will end justly, but cruelly. Not everyone will accept such an ending.