The Monk and the Demon

Russia, the first half of the nineteenth century. A monk named Ivan arrives at a remote monastery. He looks ordinary enough, but unusual things happen around him: fires start, objects go missing, and nobody can explain it. The cause is a demon that has attached itself to him; Ivan can see it and the others cannot. A running negotiation opens between the two. The demon works at leading him astray, Ivan endures, and in time the relationship goes somewhere else entirely. Nikolay Dostal directs, with Timofey Tribuntsev as Ivan. A hundred and fifteen minutes. A comedy playing with the forms of Russian folk tales and lives of the saints, and arguing a serious religious question along the way: who gets saved.