Beanpole - Expat Cinema Rotterdam
Two tenacious women in the post-siege ruins of 1945 Leningrad struggle to rebuild their lives, in Kantemir Balagov’s loose adaptation of Nobel Prize–winning author Svetlana Alexievich’s The Unwomanly Face of War.
It’s 1945, and Leningrad lies in ruins, wartorn and paralyzed. Iya (Viktoria Miroshnichenko), a nurse, and Masha (Vasilisa Perelygina), a soldier, are traumatized from the siege and its aftermath, and struggling to rebuild their lives. The Russian title of Kantemir Balagov’s Beanpole, Dylda, suggests an awkwardness and lack of grace that is mirrored in the setting’s bombed-out streets, smashed tenements, and hospitals full of limbless veterans — and in its hapless yet tenacious protagonists.
A former student of Alexander Sokurov, Balagov broke onto the scene in 2017 with his debut feature Closeness, which competed in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard, where it won the FIPRESCI prize. Beanpole — produced by Alexander Rodnyansky, who was also behind Andrey Zvyangintsev’s Elena, Leviathan, and Loveless — won both Best Director and FIPRESCI in this year’s Un Certain Regard in Cannes.
Kies tijdstip
- Film
Two tenacious women in the post-siege ruins of 1945 Leningrad struggle to rebuild their lives, in Kantemir Balagov’s loose adaptation of Nobel Prize–winning author Svetlana Alexievich’s The Unwomanly Face of War.
It’s 1945, and Leningrad lies in ruins, wartorn and paralyzed. Iya (Viktoria Miroshnichenko), a nurse, and Masha (Vasilisa Perelygina), a soldier, are traumatized from the siege and its aftermath, and struggling to rebuild their lives. The Russian title of Kantemir Balagov’s Beanpole, Dylda, suggests an awkwardness and lack of grace that is mirrored in the setting’s bombed-out streets, smashed tenements, and hospitals full of limbless veterans — and in its hapless yet tenacious protagonists.
A former student of Alexander Sokurov, Balagov broke onto the scene in 2017 with his debut feature Closeness, which competed in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard, where it won the FIPRESCI prize. Beanpole — produced by Alexander Rodnyansky, who was also behind Andrey Zvyangintsev’s Elena, Leviathan, and Loveless — won both Best Director and FIPRESCI in this year’s Un Certain Regard in Cannes.
