Oleg

Oleg is a young butcher of Russian origin living in Latvia, where he holds the status of a non-citizen. He goes to Brussels for better pay, to a meat factory. There a workmate sets him up and Oleg loses the job. Alone in a country not his own, he falls into the hands of a man named Andrzej. Juris Kursietis's Latvian film screened in the Directors' Fortnight at Cannes. The subject is plain: how a person can be enslaved in the middle of Europe, in a place where on paper everything is in order. The telling does not make Oleg naive; what holds him is debt, language and having no status. The camera stays over his shoulder throughout.