A Russian teenager living in London dies during childbirth but leaves clues in her diary that could tie her child to a rape involving a violent Russian mob family.
Acting
Mortensen's terrifyingly controlled stillness
Practical Effects
That bathhouse sequence: zero CGI, all pain
Direction
Cronenberg's most human film about inhumanity
Director
David Cronenberg
Viggo Mortensen
Nikolai Luzhin
Naomi Watts
Anna Ivanovna Khitrova
Vincent Cassel
Kirill
Armin Mueller-Stahl
Semyon
Sinéad Cusack
Helen
Donald Sumpter
Yuri
Jerzy Skolimowski
Stepan
Josef Altin
Ekrem
Aleksandar Mikic
Soyka
Sarah-Jeanne Labrosse
Tatiana
Lalita Ahmed
Customer
Tatiana Maslany
Tatiana (voice)
Tereza Srbova
Kirilenko
David Papava
Chechen
Tamer Hassan
Chechen
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Mortensen spent weeks with Russian ex-cons to nail the accent and prison tattoos, some of which are authentic criminal markings.
Cronenberg called this his 'romantic' film — the central relationship isn't Anna and Nikolai, it's Nikolai and Kirill's twisted surrogate father-son dynamic.
CA
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