Aleksey Chupov and Natasha Merkulova’s film is an impressively deadpan triller about a security agent on a mission to redeem himself
With a title that nods to Robert Bresson and a high concept script that doffs its cap to The Fugitive, this film is in fact very much its own beast, a rollicking cat-and-mouse thriller pungently set in a Soviet
Russia where everybody is a subject, even the soldiers in charge. It’s late-30s Leningrad and the purges are in full swing. The captain craves redemption, a last-minute pass into heaven. In the meantime he’s running like a rabbit through hell.
Yuri Borisov plays Volkonogov, a shaven-headed strongman with the national security service who absconds with a folder carrying a list of the dead. His plan is to notify the family members who are still posting socks, scarves and letters to the gulags every week, believing that their loved ones are alive and will one day be released. The truth is a shock, but it also brings closure. Volkonogov figures that if he can convince one person to forgive him, his own soul might be saved.