Prix Philip Morris au festival de Karlovy-Vary, 2003
Grand prix du festival d'Aubervilliers, 2004
Prix spécial du jury à Bruxelles, 2004
Plot synopsis
After his wife’s death and the loss of his job, an aerodynamics
engineer sets off from Moscow with his 11-yearold
son for his sister’s house in Koktebel by the Black Sea.
With no money nor means of transport, they drift through
the expansive and mesmerising landscapes at the mercy of
chance. The father is content to drag his feet, stopping
occasionally for the odd job to raise money while the son
impatiently dreams of reaching the coastal resort to see
gliders fly in the wind. For the father, the journey is an
attempt to restore self-respect, to piece together his broken
life and win back the trust of his son. For the boy, the mythic
coastal town holds the key to a new life and emancipation.
They come across many hurdles but the last encounter is
with a beautiful young doctor who tends to the father’s
wounds. She is also single and lonely, and they fall in love.
The son who sees her as an intrusion on the only loving
relationship in his life sets off to complete the journey by
himself.
Source : www.berlinale.de
Directors’ statement
As two young filmmakers on a first feature-length project,
we approached the matter with great sense of responsibility.
While we were waiting for funding, we used this time (a
couple of years, in fact) for very meticulous preparation.
During our trips along the route of our protagonists, we
selected spots for virtually every shot of the film; we found
and arranged the tiniest bits of props and costumes; we
made a very detailed storyboard. Together with our cameraman,
Shandor Berkeshi, we devised a concept for our filming
style. We called it ”the forgotten camera”, whereby we would
use a lot of static, non-intrusive shots, within which life
would sort of originate independently, like it sometimes
does in documentaries (one example being this year’s Hush!
by Viktor Kossakovsky).
This was the attitude we brought to our first shooting day
on location in Crimea, Ukraine. And the first take on that
first shooting day had to be stopped when a bee fell into a
glass of orange juice that Gleb Puskepalis (our main actor)
had to drink. Today, we think this might have been a hint.
Life, as it happens around us, consists of a myriad of tiny
occurrences, which sometimes tell more than the most dramatic
of events. At any given moment, it is up to us to
observe and take note of them, or to let them stay outside
of the scope of our attention. We felt that, to tell this
particular story, we needed to create space on the screen
where such details and occurrences would unfold in the most
natural way.
One of the greatest lessons we learned while making
KOKTEBEL was that, while doing everything to implement
our concept (and we believe that we have mostly succeeded,
thanks to the excellent crew we had), we also had to be
prepared and willing to apprehend and accept the multitude
of variations that nature, actors, life in general, would bring
to our design. Without them, a film can convey only an
illusion, but not a feeling of life.
About the film
KOKTEBEL was first conceived in 1995. The first draft of the
screenplay was completed in 1998. In May of 2000, writers/
directors Khlebnikov and Popogrebsky and director of
photography Berkeshi set off on an expedition along the
route of the protagonists from Moscow to the eponymous
town on the Crimean Peninsula in order to gather additional
material and search for locations. Covering 4,000 km of
country roads and sleeping in a tent, they took pictures of
landscapes and people of rural Russia and Ukraine. Two more
expeditions followed in 2001 and 2002.
In 2001 Khelbnikov and Popogrebsky sent their script to
the European PitchPoint, an international script competition
organised by ScriptHouse Agency and the European
Film Academy. KOKTEBEL was one of the 10 scripts selected
out of a total 120, and the writers were invited to
present it at the 2001 Berlin Film Festival.
That same year, producer Roman Borisevich submitted
KOKTEBEL to the Russian Ministry of Culture. The project
passed the selection committee and received state funding.
KOKTEBEL was shot in October and November 2002 entirely
on location in three rural regions of Russia and two regions
of Ukraine.
Production note
(...) This unprepossessing but remarkably sensitive road
movie will most likely have a very busy festival career –
and not just because it took the Grand Jury Special Prize
and the Silver St. George. Rather, few selectors will be able
to resist KOKTEBEL’S simple, straightforward, unadorned
approach and its understated, laconic style, as it follows
an 11-year-old boy and his father on a 1,000-mile journey
by foot from Moscow to the Black Sea. Made by two young
filmmakers, one who studied film, the other psychology,
whose only previous experience has been shorts they
directed together, it should find receptive eyes and
specialised niche slots practically everywhere it will be
shown. (...) In a variation on Truffaut’s 400 Blows finale,
the last shot shows the boy sitting on an abandoned pier
by the sea, gazing into the horizon as his father comes to
sit next to him as both face the unknown mysteries of life.
Surprisingly self-assured and confident for first-time directors,
Khlebnikov and Popogorsky adopt an unhurried pace
that perfectly suits this kind of journey. They often use long,
immobile shots, in which the characters either start as hardly
discernible points before gradually approaching or vice
versa. Care is taken to place characters amid the perspective
of the landscape, from the vast chilly northern spaces,
basked with brown-grey light to brighter open vistas in the
south. With one exception, there are never more than three
or four people in any frame, while at times it is left empty.
Acting is on the subdued side, with a strong presence required
more than actual performances.
Ultimately, the film is as much about the relationship between
father and son as it is about life in the Russian countryside,
and about the people living there (...).
Keeping the dialogue down to an essential minimum,
Khlebnikov and Popogorsky dote on visual details, such as
the boy looking at the back of a girl’s head, that often speak
louder than several pages of conversation. And laudably,
they trust the audience to understand what they are talking
about.
Dan Fainaru, in: Screen Daily, Moscow, 3 July, 2003
Source : www.berlinale.de