News

There is no job more thankless than the prophet of doom, nor one more necessary. Prescient commentators rant about the degradation of civil society, yet in an age when every conflict can be accessed or flicked away with the swipe of a finger on a smartphone, such cries of injustice generally constitute just another shout in the wind. The compunction to tell the truth remains, which is why Sergei Loznitsa’s body of work is so indispensable: It refuses to be complacent. The Ukrainian director’s “Donbass” is a natural follow-up to “A Gentle Creature”: Though the two have little in common stylistically, they’re both screams against a society that’s lost its humanity and can’t be bothered to care.

Seamlessly divided into 13 segments, “Donbass” recounts the corrosive nature of the conflict pitting Ukrainian nationalists against supporters of Russia’s proxy Donetsk People’s Republic in eastern Ukraine.

This is the Pure Movies review of A Gentle Creature, directed by Sergei Loznitsa, and starring Vasilina Makovtseva, Liya Akhedzhakova, Valeriu Andriutã and Boris Kamorzin. It’s difficult to write about A Gentle Creature. This is partly by design, of course, with writer/director Sergei Loznitsa refashioning a Dostoyevsky short story into a sprawling, elusive, beguiling epic. What quickly becomes apparent during Loznitsa’s two-and-a-half-hour opus is that it’s a film of ravishing ambition, mounting a complex allegory for life in modern Russia that confounds narrative sense at every turn. In its place is an intricate framework of signs and signifiers, vignettes of dreamlike absurdity that flow with hazy indifference towards somewhere, well, let’s just say ‘bleak’.

We open with a startling close-up of cement being made in a truck. The image is intriguing, confounding, but strikingly beautiful in its framing. The eye, at least initially, doesn’t quite know what to do with the information given, for the close-up sends the process of making cement into abstraction, and we’re at a loss to know how to feel about or interpret the given information. You don’t quite know what you’re looking at – but whatever it is, it’s intriguing. This perfectly sums up the experience of watching documentary filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa’s first narrative feature My Joy as a whole. It’s a journey that takes us through unexpected, often harrowing twist and turns, unafraid to leave us perplexed, confused, or even frustrated. This lack of predictability is the film’s strength, as it reflects in form and structure the chaotic daily lives of the struggling Russians that it depicts. My Joy...

Moscow -- For a second year running, Kinotavr, Russia's main film festival, ended with a surprise victory by a first-time director.

As the 20th edition came to a close Sunday in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, the festival jury gave the top award to "Volchok" (Spinning Top), the debut feature by Vasili Sigarev, who was previously known as a playwright. The drama about a complicated relationship between mother and daughter in a Russian provincial town also collected the screenplay prize.

Last year's winner, "Shultes" by Bakur Bakuradze, was also the director's debut feature. Overall, the festival was regarded as a victory for the younger generation of local filmmakers, who took practically all the main prizes.

Ivan Vyrypayev picked up the best director's award for his sophomore feature, "Kislorod" (Oxygen), a sophisticated musical youth drama loosely based on the Ten Commandments, which was also awarded for best music.

"Spinning Top...