Okraina

A farmer’s peaceful existence comes to an end when a gang of shady characters brutally takes possession of his land in order to exploit the oil reserves it harbours. In response, the farmer recruits a handful of his surly neighbours to take on the trespassers, promptly leaving a trail of death and destruction in their wake. The showdown takes them to Moscow, into the old/new centre of power. In black-and-white images both symbolic and surreal, this taciturn road movie takes aim at the predatory capitalism of the Yeltsin era and the westernised Russian film industry, by making visual allusions to the tradition of Soviet pre-war cinema while ironically recoding its propagandist DNA. (goEast - Festival des mittel- und osteuropäischen Films)