One funeral. One stranger. One stepbrother who might've been murdered by memory itself.
Andrey's stepbrother Sasha dies, with whom he was destined to meet only once. With a heavy heart, Andrei goes to a funeral and finds himself in an ominous atmosphere of a complete stranger and, in general, a family alien to him. Trying to figure out the strange circumstances of his brother’s death, Andrey re-experiences the events of a seemingly long forgotten and painful past, because it seems that only it can tell where the truth is and what really happened to Sasha - an accident or suicide?
Acting
Makovetskiy carries the weight of a stranger's death like it's his own.
Cinematography
Funeral grays and washed-out memories—visual poetry of Russian decay.
Direction
Ashkenazy treats time like wet clay: moldable, fragile, collapsing.
Director
Sergej Ashkenazy
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Shot during Russia's post-Soviet spiritual vacuum, the film channels the era's obsession with buried family secrets and generational trauma. Ashkenazy was primarily a theater director—explains the claustrophobic, single-location intensity.
The 78-minute runtime was allegedly forced by budget cuts; Ashkenazy later claimed the compression 'made it breathe like a dying man.' Stebunov and Makovetskiy never met before filming, maintaining genuine stranger tension.
RU
