Mira

A Russian cosmonaut aboard a space station sees a threat coming for Earth: a body knocked out of orbit is going to strike Vladivostok. His fifteen-year-old daughter Lera is in that city, and they are not on good terms. After the impact the city floods and the girl is left alone in the wreckage. The film is not interested in disaster. It is interested in communication running one way: the father can see his daughter from orbit and try to direct her, while she can hear his voice and cannot answer. Its emotional line rests entirely on that asymmetry. The form is heavy visual effects: a flooded city, collapsing buildings, space station sequences. One example of Russian cinema turning to big-budget disaster films in recent years. Dmitry Kiselev directed. Who it is for: viewers who like disaster films and large-scale effects work. Who it is not for: anyone after an original screenplay. The setup follows the Hollywood template, the characters are thin and the emotional beats arrive exactly where expected.