River

The film takes place at the end of the nineteenth century in a small colony of lepers established in a remote part of the Yakut taiga. A healthy woman from outside joins the community and a closeness forms between her and one of the young men there; she becomes pregnant. The arrival of another woman from outside upsets the balance and a triangle is formed whose end is tragic. This community, cast out by everyone, is itself churned by jealousy and betrayal. The film does not use the illness as a spectacle of horror; it tells of outcast people building an order of their own. The account runs fifty minutes and takes place inside a hard winter. Tuyara Svinoboeva appears in Aleksei Balabanov’s Russian film, completed in 2002.