My Joy
Schastye moye
“Arresting and powerful… A chance encounter leads to a nightmare journey into a Russian heart of darkness.” — Peter Hames, London Film Festival
Genres & Subjects: Drama
Producers: Heino Deckert, Oleg Kokhan
Photography: Oleg Mutu
Editor: Danielius Kokanauskis
Production designer: Kirill Shuvalov
In Russian with English subtitles
CinemaScope
With: Viktor Nemets (Georgy), Vlad Ivanov (Major from Moscow), Vladimir Golovin (old man), Maria Varsami (gypsy woman), Olga Shuvalova (girl prostitute), Alexey Vertkov (young lieutenant), Yuriy Sviridenko (one-armed man)
Festivals: Cannes (In Competition), Karlovy Vary, Melbourne, Toronto, New York, Vancouver, London 2010; Rotterdam, San Francisco 2011
This audacious and impressive feature debut from documentarian Sergei Loznitsa (Blockade, Revue NZIFF08) takes us on a Kafkaesque journey deep into the literal and metaphorical back roads of darkest Russia, complete with several somewhat Buñuelian diversions. Connoisseurs of Russian cinema may well intuit that the title is deeply ironic, and it is. — MM
“My Joy is filmed with a documentary-maker’s eye – it’s based on true stories – but it’s also a horror story of living ghosts, a portrait of the old weird Russia in which bad luck rules and is passed on by stories, for instance, told to truck driver Georgy by a mysterious old man about his return to Russia after World War II and the chance encounter that destroyed his life. The film’s constantly surprising labyrinthine structure, modelled, according to the director, on the bizarre tree-like structure of the Russian road system… [makes] this a powerfully antirealist film.” — Jonathan Romney, Sight & Sound
View the trailer on Flicks.co.nz
