Sisters

Sveta is thirteen and lives with her grandmother; she wants to be a sniper, reads magazines about rifles and ingratiates herself with nobody. Her half sister Dina is younger, spoiled and plays the violin. The girls share a mother and have different fathers. Dina's father Alik comes out of prison and his old associates want money from him. When he does not pay they try to take the girls. Their mother sends them both to a relative. On the way the money runs out, the places to stay run out, and the two girls are left with each other. Sergey Bodrov Jr. directed and wrote it; it is his first and only film as a director. Oksana Akinshina, Ekaterina Gorina and Tatyana Kolganova are in the cast. It is a Russian production. Bodrov died a year later during the shooting of his second film. The film won the award for best first film at the Kinotavr festival in 2001. The matter it treats is the distance between the two girls; one is used to being loved and the other is not. The narrative keeps the Russia of the nineties in the background; gangs, money and disorder are part of daily life. The film directs its child actors without exaggeration and does not fall into emotional exploitation. Oksana Akinshina was a new name at the time and the part brought her forward. The narrative is short; the film runs under eighty minutes. The production is small in scale and the locations real. The ending gives no reunion but leaves both girls changed. Its limit is scale; the narrative is simple, the plot thin, and the ending abrupt. Who it is for: viewers who like Russian independent cinema and stories centred on children. Who it is not for: it is simple, bleak, and the ending rueful.