Russian Resurrection Film Festival
Click here if you liked this article 40 
Date Reviewed: 01/11/2018
Review by Sharon Hurst
It's the 15th year for RRFF, and this year 16 new films will screen, as well as a retrospective featuring a selection of award-winning Soviet films. Much-awarded actor Konstantin Khabensky stars in two high profile films, Sobiborand Selfie. As usual, I've been lucky to preview a few.
Sobibor: Sobibor was a Nazi death camp famous for a mass escape of prisoners, led by Russian/Jewish POW Alexander Perchersky. In 1987 a film was made starring Rutger Hauer. This version of the film virtually a blockbuster, full of drama, violence, graphic detail and heroism. Like so many films of this nature, it shows the best and absolute worst of human beings. Ghastliness of camp life is front and centre, but so are hope and courage. A very strong film.
Pagans: Natalia, estranged mother of Oleg, turns up on his doorstep bearing gifts from a religious pilgrimage. Discovering that Oleg and his family hold little faith, and her grand-daughter is running off the rails, she sets about trying to win them over to her devoutness. This is in parts humorous, and no doubt a fairly negative view on the power the Orthodox church can hold over its devotees.
Jump Man: Denis is abandoned as a baby because he has a condition in which he feels no pain. His mother, Oksana, returns and hooks him up with a gang who make him jump in front of cars to then scam money out of the drivers. The police, courts, lawyers are all complicit. This is a disturbing and scathing commentary upon corruption in Russian society and the disintegration of family values.
 |
| © RRFF - Russian superstar Khabensky stars in Selfie and Sobibor. |
Selfie: A stylish thriller about a man who discovers he has been replaced by a doppelganger (double). When he is institutionalised by his disbelieving friends, only his daughter seems to see the truth. The film looks great, is well acted, but aspects of the plot don't hang together for me, with several illogicalities that I simply can't get my head around.