Masha, who works for a radio station, and Maxim, a street sweeper with an architectural degree, cross paths with each other when they are at an indecisive point in their lives.
Cinematography
St. Petersburg's endless white nights and gray dawns become a third character.
Acting
Fedulova and Tsyganov's chemistry builds entirely through absence and almost-looks.
Direction
Bychkova's patient hand lets awkwardness breathe like a language.
Director
Oksana Bychkova
Yekaterina Fedulova
Masha
Evgeny Tsyganov
Maksim
Irina Rakhmanova
Lera
Kirill Pirogov
Gleb
Tatyana Kravchenko
Tatyana Petrovna
Aleksandr Bashirov
landlord
Artyom Semakin
Dima
Andrey Krasko
man in underwear
Vladimir Mashkov
Man in slippers
Aleksey Barabash
Kostya
Aleksandr Khvan
janitor
Oleg Dolin
Fedor
Evgeniy Kulakov
Vitya
Yuriy Tsurilo
general-mayor
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Released during Russia's post-Soviet economic precarity, the film captures a generation of overeducated underemployed urban youth. The title's 'FM' nods to Western-format radio stations that arrived in the 1990s as symbols of new possibility.
Bychkova reportedly structured the screenplay around actual St. Petersburg locations, letting the city's bridges and metro stations dictate the narrative's geography of near-misses.
RU
