18.09.23, 12:11 2023-09-18T12:11:01+03:00
Director: Nikita Lundin
“KinoPoisk”
since September 23
On Nikolai’s (Sergei Chikhachev) farm everything is like in the Russian hinterland: chickens, birch trees and a barn with all kinds of garbage. It is true that only robots work there. We are in the 22nd century and his village (more precisely, a cybervillage) is located on Mars. Which is now considered a cosmic backyard and is again almost uninhabited: everyone has left there. Nikolai and his family are the last inhabitants of the planet. True, the Izhevsk Dynamics corporation and its director (Grigory Skryapkin) have big plans for this: ore deposits were found on Mars, and the only obstacle to building a plant there is Nikolai’s farm.
One of the undisputed favorites of the second half of the festival, the “Cyber Village” series emerged from a series of YouTube videos created by Sergei Vasiliev, who is now the director of the project. Before the premiere of the “New Season,” the creators of “Cybervillage” explained the concept as follows: “Love and Doves” meets “Star Wars.” And it is difficult to find a more succinct description: this is a series about a warm and bright future, in which an old UAZ drives around the Martian off-road vehicle on a gravitational cushion and robots in padded jackets sweep the yards. There is cyberpunk and Vasiliev came up with a new type of nostalgic fiction that can be called social futurism. At the same time, “Cyber Village” is very well done: the views of space, spaceships and numerous robots do not look poor or fake (our respect to the CGI masters). The plot may be a little naive, but perhaps this is even better: the audience is offered a whole new world in which it would otherwise be easy to get confused. “Cybervillage” is a film about eternal values, which are the same on Mars in the 22nd century.
Director: Evgeny Stychkin
“KinoPoisk”
Release date still unknown
A new student, Anton (Grisha Vernik), arrives at a posh Moscow school. He is bolder, more self-confident, richer than his classmates and quickly claims the place of leader and first beauty of the class, Alina (Sofya Arzhanykh). But not everyone is happy with the way he looks; For example, the thug Alex (Kirill Bukhantsev), who lives not in his parents’ mansion, but in a Khrushchev with his sick grandmother, is not happy. But even he agrees to go to the new guy’s party: everyone is interested in knowing how he lives. This evening, as the audience is told almost immediately, ends in tragedy.
Evgeniy Stychkin is not only an actor, but also a talented director: between series about HIV (“Patient Zero”) and sports (“Olympics”), he directed a smaller project about teenagers and their growing up. This is, along with the endless 90s, one of the main themes for the Russian serial industry, and it seems that the reserves of this gold mine have almost been exhausted. But “Cicadas” proves that this is not so: Stychkin was able to say on this topic, if not something completely new, then at least original and not boring. “Cigarras”, which tells the experiences and fears of teenagers, manages to press the weak points of the audience and remind them of first love, the search for oneself, the fear of not achieving recognition (themes that are also relevant for those who have long ago who exceeded the age of the characters in the project). The teenagers in the series are different from each other and not one-dimensional. This is the merit of both the screenwriter Ekaterina Tirdatova and the excellent cast: new beautiful faces appear on the screen: you not only empathize with the characters, but also admire them. Grisha Vernik deserves special praise: his role is one of the best at the festival.
Director: Zhora Kryzhovnikov
Start, wink
Release date still unknown
Zhora Kryzhovnikov’s new project, her first series in five years, after “Call DiCaprio!” In the 80s of perestroika, at the end of the era of Soviet power, in Kazan, the good boy Andrei (Leon Kemstach) meets the hooligan Marat (Ruzil Minekaev) and after him “joins” a local gang. There are many of these on the city streets, but Marat’s choice is already determined: in one of the groups is his half-brother (Ivan Yankovsky), who has just returned from Afghanistan. Together, the boys will ascend the gangster hierarchy: through blood, betrayal and the collapse of the country.
Kryzhovnikov (director of the series and author of the script, together with Andrey Zolotarev) is one of the most talented Russian directors. And in terms of direction, “The Boy’s Word” is head and shoulders above, more convincing and simply great than many of the series shown in the “New Season.” But it is still very difficult to see: this is a project about a vicious circle of violence, from which the only way out is to go first. The concentration of terrible and inhumanly cruel things on the screen is increasing from one episode to the next, and the main impact of the series is not aesthetic, but painful.
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