Director: Ivan Tverdovsky
Cast: Maria Poezhaeva, Filipp Avdeyev, Nikita Kukushkin, Artem Markaryan, Irina Vilkova
Screening time: 14.04.2016. 20:30
Screening location: Kino Tuškanac
Runtime: 98 min
Awards: 12 wins & 7 nominations Seattle International Film Festival 2015: Won New Director's Showcase Special Jury Prize, Nominated for New Director's Showcase Award
Synopsis:
"Lena (Masha Poezhaeva) is a bright and beautiful girl, confined to a wheelchair for most of the time. After studying at home for years, she is assigned to a special class for disabled pupils who have to prove to a commission at the end of the school year that they are “worthy” of attending “normal” classes with other children. The class is populated by students who have a wide variety of impairments, from Down Syndrome, through bipolar disorder, to simple stuttering. Such a fascist institutional set-up builds anger in the viewer right from the start.
Lena falls in love with Anton (Philipp Avdeev), the “pretty boy” in the class. Their relationship will turn out to be almost fatal due not only to the social unawareness of the faculty and the backwards, “traditional” ideas of their families, but even more so to the cruelty of their peers. Children are cruel, and children who have been subjected to malevolence in school, society and even their own families, only because they are different, often turn out brutal."
