Geograf globus propil

The biologist Viktor Sluzhkin is unemployed. Desperate to find any job in the provincial town of Perm, where he lives with his wife and daughter, he accepts a post as geography teacher in a school. Working with teenagers is a challenging task, but he manages to make friends with the pupils, and win their trust and genuine respect. However, Sluzhkin’s professional and family life suffers from his regular drinking bouts. Although Sluzhkin makes more than one mistake in life, he is a caring man and therefore a loveable character, even if others might consider him a failure. In a sense, he is a man unable to adapt to life in the post-Soviet space, who will forever remain a “superfluous man”, or someone whom the new Russia might condemn for all his shortcomings.
Based on a novel by the popular Russian writer Alexei Ivanov, this film depicts a new type in Russian culture, a man who will characterise the epoch as once upon a time did the “superfluous man” of Russia’s classical literature in the 19th century. This type tries, and ultimately fails, to find his place in society without ever losing his energy for life. Produced by Valery Todorovsky and directed by Alexander Veledinsky, the film deservedly took the main prize in Sochi at Kinotavr 2013, one of the largest and most important Russian film festivals.