5 Terapia

It begins and ends with a group therapy session and reminiscences of the years when he would hide in the bathroom to escape his mother. The HIV-positive son is given a towel of his own; nobody wants anything to do with his kind. Despite promises made to the love of his life that he'll mend his ways, Dombrovskiy is in the thrall of addiction; in fact not only he, but the city and the crumbling empire as a whole seek refuge from the inferno in a frenzy of criminality, drug abuse and violence.

“This is neither art house, nor experimental cinema; this is a full scale film, a social blockbuster” says director Alisa Pavlovskaya, whose film adaptation of Dombrovskiy’s autobiographical novels represents a gauntlet thrown down to established cultural tastes. A story of a catharsis with far-reaching consequences, its portrayal is authentic, detailed and close to home, as embodied by the cast of real characters from the events described. BW