A Gentle Creature

Director: Sergei Loznitsa

2017 / 143min / DCP

Inspired by Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s 1876 short story of the same title, Loznitsa’s A Gentle Creature is a harrowing, headlong plunge into the charnel house that is contemporary Russian bureaucracy. The film follows its unnamed protagonist (Vasilina Makovtseva) as she negotiates an underworld economy that thrives around the corruption-corroded prison where her husband is incarcerated. An absurdist, carnivalesque depiction of a place where all that one touches wounds, where law is arbitrary and justice elusive, and where the concept of “civil society” is only a distant memory cherished by a few.

Distributor: The Festival Agency