Playing the Victim

Recently voted Best Film at the Rome Film Festival, this critical hit references Hamlet as a way of getting at the current cultural moment. The use of Shakespeare is not surprising given that Serebrennikov is one of Russia’s leading theatre directors and this film adapts his stage production from the Chekhov Moscow Art Theater. The action, which is interspersed with animation, is set in a contemporary Russia where black humour is the best alternative to despair. Valya, an ironic slacker who lives with his mother and uncle, plays the victim in police video crime reconstructions. The hilariously inept attempts at CSI-type investigation build to a memorable outpouring of social bile in a Japanese sashimi restaurant. This is the first in a multi-film project entitled New People. The project's manifesto emphasises: "All the films are united by the presence of a main hero no older than 35 who passes through a cycle of collisions amid the realities of present-day life."

He has a fear of life, almost a life-phobia. Many people have it. Sometimes, I find it in myself. It's about a loss of connection with the time he lives in -- which brings on the Hamlet idea -- and the question of what to do. It's not a path of clear action, but one of imitation, leading toward destruction. ... He's talented, he could have done a lot, but the time he lives in offers few opportunities. It becomes like the appearance of a black hole.

Kirill Serebrennikov