Chukotka, where Indigenous teenager Lyoshka lives a hardscrabble life in a remote whaling village, is the easternmost part of Russia. Beautiful in a forbidding, raw-boned way, with about half its territory above the Arctic Circle, it is separated from the westernmost Alaskan reaches of America by just 86 kilometers. But the cultural distance is immeasurably more vast, and only increased when Lyoshka’s village gets the internet, and, in an amusing tableau worthy of Aki Kaurismäki, burly men in weathered oilskins cluster round a glitchy screen on which blond camgirls pout in pink bedrooms for pay-per-minute customers.
The clash between the bleak traditional lifestyle of the villagers, who still use hand-tossed harpoons to secure their catch, reddening the sea, and the futurist fantasy of a Detroit-based online sex work enterprise is explored in uneven yet stirring ways in Philipp Yuryev’s feature debut, “The Whaler Boy.” , which perhaps convince most when they do not cohere.
The clash between the bleak traditional lifestyle of the villagers, who still use hand-tossed harpoons to secure their catch, reddening the sea, and the futurist fantasy of a Detroit-based online sex work enterprise is explored in uneven yet stirring ways in Philipp Yuryev’s feature debut, “The Whaler Boy.” , which perhaps convince most when they do not cohere.
- 1/15/2022
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
"Take me home." Film Movement has unveiled the official US trailer for an indie coming-of-age film from Russia titled The Whaler Boy, marking the feature directorial debut of filmmaker Philipp Yuryev. This first premiered in the Venice Days sidebar at the 2020 Venice Film Festival, and won the Director's Award there. It also played at numerous other festivals around the world through the last year. The film follows a young hunter, living in a male-dominated whaling community, who sets off an a journey to find a webcam girl he saw on his computer after the internet arrives in their town. Featuring stunning photography of the dramatic landscape, and punctuated by some off-kilter humor, "there’s an almost fable-like simplicity to this atmospheric coming of age story" about the division between two worlds. The small cast includes Vladimir Onokhov, Kristina Asmus, and Arieh Worthalter. This looks quite compelling, I need to check it out.
- 12/20/2021
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
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