THE STORY – Following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, many people in Russia face a weighty choice: military service, prison or exile. Margarita, Yuri and their friends refuse to comply with the regime and leave the country in search of a new home. They no longer have a place to which they can return, nor one where they feel truly welcome.
THE TEAM – Patric Chiha (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 87 Minutes
In a sea of documentaries focusing on the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, Patric Chiha’s latest “A Russian Winter” aims to take a far more understated approach to exploring how war uproots the lives of adolescents, let alone those from the aggressor’s country. A combination of feelings arises among these individuals: guilt, shame, isolation, etc. The headspace they find themselves in is dark, leading to a slew of conversations that most audiences will find themselves absorbed by. Yet despite the almost cinematic way Chiha frames this documentary, it drifts aimlessly as the subjects’ thoughts stream and they begin to go in circles.
After an introduction to what’s captured in the info-red of Russian streets, parading machines of death, the film introduces us to the daily lives of a group of friends led by Yuri and Margarita. They are free-spirited individuals trapped by the internal confines this war has imposed on them. Chiha’s focus on Yuri sets the tone for the film’s overall sense of instability, a feeling that deeply resonates with the subject. There is no idea of a sense of tomorrow. No reason to plan beyond the day that they are currently experiencing. It’s a stagnation that settles in the souls of these subjects. We learn some of what made displaced Russian citizens like Yuri and others in his circle happy, such as their love of punk rock music. Chiha dips his toes into this environment, even using moments of club-esque neon lighting and dance montages set to blasting rock to depict these subjects’ brief escapes from the societal pressures around them.
While we hear about those still within Russia, most like Margarita, are essentially exiled (in her case, Istanbul), embodying an elevated form of adolescent angst as she’s cut off from her home country. Margarita’s feelings mirror Yuri’s, albeit she’s strapped financially and mentally. Their friendship is the one emotional current that ties the film together. Still, there’s a detachment that prevents audiences from wholly investing in it, unlike other documentaries about this conflict we have seen in the past few years.
Maybe it’s the style of Chiha’s filmmaking that keeps audiences detached as its methodical pacing makes these conversations feel all the bit more dragged out. The film is built upon this series of conversations, occasionally deviating to showcase the environments they now find themselves in, or even to make-up-donning masquerades that stand out for better or worse. Céline Bozon’s cinematography embraces this washed-out sensibility that induces a hallucinatory impression on viewers. It’s as if this is a dream the subjects cannot escape. When juxtaposed with real-life environments, Bozon’s eye produces a stylized vision that aims to give “A Russian Winter” an aesthetic that elevates the material. Chiha’s visual eye does plenty to alleviate viewers’ patience, along with the film’s brief runtime. Still, if you’re not tapped into the cinema verité style the film is built around, there’s no reason this wouldn’t feel like the longest eighty-seven minutes in a long time.
It all builds to an ending that, while serving its thematic purpose, will feel unsatisfactory to many. In a way, that is the point a filmmaker like Chiha is trying to stamp on viewers’ minds. There is no true ending, as these subjects are forced to become the self-described vagrants of the world they feel they are as long as the war continues their lives as much as they feel it doesn’t continue as well. It’s a sad reality that we’ll have to reckon with long after the credits are done rolling. Whether the film has enough to say to last that long in the minds of those who see it is an entirely different question. “A Russian Winter” has one thing many documentaries about the Russia-Ukraine war need: perspective. But just because it has a unique perspective doesn’t mean there’s much else.
