The Geographer Who Didn’t Deliver the Eggplant – Weekend – Kommersant

“Far Close” is the feature-length debut of Ivan Sosnin, known for his good-natured short films about the inhabitants of boundless Russia. In this film, the audience is waiting for one of the last big roles of Yevgeny Syty, who passed away this spring, an hour and a half of travel around the Leningrad Region, which managed to play the whole of Russia here, and a clever story, after which you want to call your loved ones.

Text: Vasily Stepanov

Boris Petrovich (Yevgeny Syty), a widower, rusk and enthusiastic gardener, works as a geography teacher in a secondary school. He, like all the people played by Yevgeny Syty, is not bad, but you cannot call him pleasant. Children for dislike of progress and digital devices call him Leshim, colleagues dislike him for petty claims and memos to the authorities, and the only son Misha (Philip Avdeev) leaves his birthday without even drinking tea – his father’s notations are also already fed up with him. Life seems to have been lived in vain, until Boris Petrovich gets a smartphone, thanks to which the geographer registers in social networks, where, of course, he quickly finds a girlfriend of interest. Her name is Nadezhda, and she is also crazy about eggplants. One problem: Nadezhda is too far from Boris – he is in the Khabarovsk Territory, and she is in Lyubertsy near Moscow. But nothing, for a real online novel, even such a distance is not a sentence. Having finally quarreled with the teaching staff, counting the tomatoes in his greenhouse before entrusting watering to the neighbors, and cutting the most representative vegetable for the lady of the heart, Boris Petrovich jumps into his son’s motor home. Misha is not happy, but do not refuse the same father! He is just transporting a restored car from the Far East to the capital – such is his job.

At first, the road gives both completely negative emotions: the father, who has never traveled outside the region, is unbearable, and the son bullies the pensioner for five minutes, because through his fault the precious yellow bus loses its presentation. However, kilometer after kilometer, the friendship of generations grows stronger, and Boris Petrovich and Misha drive up to the reserved Lyubertsy already as a real family.

A detailed description of the film, if it is continued, will most likely convince the reader that it is a typical “good movie”, but Ivan Sosnin, who debuts “Distant relatives” in a big movie, is still far from Sarik Andreasyan. His cinema may be naive, but not artless, and the characters live in a bright, but still not idyllic dull world. Everyday life is embellished, but recognizable – the fabulous decoration of Sosnin’s cinema is akin to electric garlands and flashlights, which he loves so much. Turned it on – nothing seems to have changed, but it’s beautiful.

Ivan Sosnin, although young, is already well known to both the professional community and the audience for his large-scale project of the short film Ivans Remembering Kinship, which was launched as a marketing initiative for the canning brand Uncle Vanya. Millions of views on YouTube collected his stories about how ordinary people in boundless Russia – teachers, builders, students, musicians, shift workers, residents of the city and village, capital and provinces – meet each other, are surprised at each other and find mutual understanding, then and opening the case along the way, jars of cucumbers and squash caviar. Later, some episodes of this endless saga about the fact that people just need a little “more good” in life (as they sang in the credits of one of the “Ivanovo” stories – about dogs that were sheltered by a road worker) were formed in the full-length almanac “Ivanovo happiness”, and Sosnin’s Red Pepper Film production company continued to gather corporate clients, from Boucher to Samsung.

However, there is no short film director who would not dream of making a big film. And “Distant Relatives”, accumulating all the features of Sosnin’s cinema – recognizable artists, railway platforms, fetishistic attention to vegetables and the garlands mentioned above – not only sum up the “Ivanovsky” stage in the filmography of Ivan Sosnin, but state that we have an established author with recognizable handwriting. It can even be said that “Distant Relatives” is also a promotional film in its own way: this journey through all of Russia was almost entirely filmed in the Leningrad Region, and how can one not freeze with delight and love for native Izhorian forests and dales? This is the promotion they deserve.

In addition to formal elements, an important distinguishing feature of this author’s cinema is its democratic nature. “Distant Relatives” is one of those films that will please grandparents, dad and mom, tear off the smartphone of teenage children. This desire for maximum breadth of coverage explains both the tube old-fashioned humor and the “everything will be fine” intonation. But here is the snag – Sosnin, who never studied cinematography (at one time for the sake of cinema, he quit metallurgical), but comprehended the basics of the profession on his own with a camera donated in childhood for his birthday, unlike other film school graduates, you paradoxically believe. At the end of “Distant Relatives”, when the history of the purple eggplant merges with the history of the emerald city, and the Russian Railways turns into a yellow brick road, along which Elena Yakovleva will definitely come from Lyubertsy, one wants to burst into tears. Even a harsh film critic, hardened by thousands of views.

In theaters from 29 September

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