On the morning of New Year’s Day. Lenka sets out to avenue Torforezov, the boulevard of peat cutters, where a new job at a kiosk is waiting for her. The man whose shift is getting longer and longer – or might never end – understandably reacts quite angrily to the people around him. While he is waiting for her, Lenka tumbles from one bizarre situation into the next, almost as if she was following an inner radar that leads her from one mess into the next. Even if that mess only means to be followed by a musician who desperately wants her to see his music video…
In his third feature film, theater director Vasilij Sigarev transforms the industrial juggernaut of Ekaterinburg into a Russian Land of Oz – an enchanted place whose inhabitants are all lost in their own rituals, sometimes heartbreakingly dismal, sometimes eccentrically absurd. His Dorothy sometimes seems a bit simple-minded or just introspective. Maybe this provides a necessary protection from provincial madness. His work is yet another splendid example of the fact that contemporary Russia is one of the world’s most exciting film countries at the moment.
