Alien Girl

The middle of the nineties. A team of four men is given a job: they are to collect a woman living in Prague and bring her back. Her nickname is Alien and she is the sister of a criminal called Babai, recently arrested. Babai's testimony could burn some important names, and if his sister is held he will keep quiet. The team sets off. None of them knows what kind of person the woman is. Anton Bormatov's film is about the criminal world after the Soviet Union came apart and it does not prettify that period at all; the violence is sudden, unjustified and boringly everyday. Not one of the four is someone the audience could side with, and the film does not try to fix that. It caused argument in Russia when it was shown; some took it for an honest portrait of the period, others accused it of turning violence into a spectacle. A hundred and nine minutes.