Country of the Deaf

Rita's boyfriend Alyosha owes gambling debts to the mafia, and she suddenly finds herself on the run. The person who opens a door to her is Yaya: a deaf dancer living by her own rules. Yaya offers to hide her but wants something in return; Rita is to leave the man, and the two of them will go together to an imaginary country where money means nothing. Valery Todorovsky's film takes place in the Moscow of the nineties: money, debt and violence everywhere. The deaf appear here as a community that has built its own language, its own economy and its own solidarity. The film neither pities that nor glorifies it. Chulpan Khamatova and Dina Korzun both came into cinema with this film; Korzun won the Russian best actress award for the part. It screened at Berlin in 1998.