KEROSIN

Though oil production booms in the areas surrounding the village of Porozhki, life for Babusya goes on as normal. Patiently she endures the strokes of fate that come her way: without asking a guest puts her only chicken straight into a cooking pot whilst the piglet, once given to her as gift, perishes due to a lack of heating in the house. Now and again daughter Lidia and granddaughter Polinka visit her in order to check that everything is okay, and yet Polinka ends up suffering herself when she's harassed on the bus by three local yobs.

Set within the wider context of media reports of a Russian oil crisis, Yusup Razykov implicitly broaches the issue of resource wealth as a curse: the environment is polluted and the locals allow themselves to be corrupted. To the viewer the name of the film's central figure, wonderfully performed by eighty-five-year-old Elena Susanina, intentionally remains unknown: instead she is lovingly referred to as “granny” and thus stands for all those who have gained little from Russia's newfound wealth. A poetically narrated modern drama that won the FIPRESCI Award at this year's Kinotavr Film Festival in Sochi. MM