12

A jury has to reach a verdict on a Chechen boy accused of killing his Russian officer stepfather. The vote is close to unanimous for guilty. One man objects. The argument takes place in a school gymnasium, because the courthouse is being renovated. The subject is not the case but twelve men telling their own lives. Each juror at some point takes the floor and moves into his own story: war, drink, migration, racism, lost children. The verdict shifts in the course of those confessions. The form is a closed room: one hall, twelve men, and footage from Chechnya cutting into the past. With those exteriors Nikita Mikhalkov departs from the rules of the classic jury film, and the narrative scatters deliberately. The production is Twelve Angry Men moved to Russia, but the ending differs and that difference changes the whole argument. Mikhalkov also plays the jury foreman. The film received a special Golden Lion at Venice and was nominated for the foreign language Oscar. It runs over two and a half hours. Sergey Makovetskiy and Sergey Garmash are among the jurors. Who it is for: viewers who like closed-room drama and are curious about how Russia looks at its own questions. Who it is not for: anyone wanting a short, tight narrative; the monologues are long and the film keeps moving away from the case itself.