Anton's Right Here

Anton is a young man with autism. His life is divided between two places. One is a shabby flat on the edge of a large city. The other is a mental hospital. The documentary finds him at a hard moment. Anton is about to be placed in a residential institution. People with his diagnosis do not live long there. The director looks on from a distance at first. The distance narrows with every passing minute, though. In the end she enters the story herself. The camera is no longer a neutral eye. The film is not about one person helping another. What it is about is one person recognising herself in another. Anton’s family is part of the account as well. Anton Kharitonov and Lyubov Arkus appear in the hundred and ten minute documentary. It is a Russian production Lyubov Arkus finished in 2012.