Cloud Heaven

In a provincial town where nothing changes, Kolya says something out of sheer boredom: that he is moving to the far east. He has no such intention. But the neighbours hear it, the news spreads, and preparations for a farewell begin. Everyone is so pleased that Kolya cannot afterwards say he was joking. The town has talked him into going. Nikolay Dostal's seventy-six minute film was made in the last year of the Soviet Union. The comedy is gentle but there is a hard observation underneath it: people take up Kolya's departure as if it were the chance of change in their own lives. Andrey Zhigalov takes the lead. The telling makes nobody the villain; everyone means well and the outcome is sad all the same.