Arsenevich: Andrey Zvyagintsev - Vozvrashchenie (2003)

El regreso (Возвращение)

Iván y Andréi, dos hermanos de 12 y 14 años, viven con su madre y su abuela en una pequeña ciudad rusa. A su padre no lo han visto desde hace muchos años y solo se acuerdan de él por una vieja foto que hay en la casa. Pero un buen día la vida de ambos sufre el enorme trastorno del regreso del padre, sin previo aviso ni explicación, con el que emprenderán un viaje en coche que los llevará por los hermosos paisajes rusos, en el que intentarán encontrar respuesta a todas las incógnitas que tienen sobre el.

"Bellamente estructurada y emocionalmente desgarradora, esta ópera prima de 2003 consagró inmediatamente al cineasta ruso Andrey Zvyagintsev. En ella, un padre se reencuentra con su mujer y sus dos hijos adolescentes tras una larga e inexplicable ausencia, reencuentro que culmina con una malograda excursión de pesca con los dos chicos. Zvyagintsev, ex actor, obtiene interpretaciones de primera clase de sus protagonistas masculinos, pero lo que más destaca es la agudeza e intensidad de su visión primordial de la naturaleza y la experiencia de la infancia.

-- Jonathan Rosenbaum

The Return

Andrey and Ivan are brothers who have been raised alone by their mother. When their father suddenly returns home after vanishing some 12 years earlier, they are both extremely happy to see him back in their lives. Ivan, however, quickly grows suspicious of his father, and determines to find out where exactly his father vanished to all those years ago, and why he suddenly decided to come back into their lives now.

"Beautifully structured and emotionally wrenching, this 2003 debut feature immediately established Russian filmmaker Andrey Zvyagintsev as a master. It charts a father’s uneasy return to his wife and two adolescent sons after a long and unexplained absence, a reunion capped by his ill-fated fishing trip with the two boys. A former actor, Zvyagintsev elicits first-rate performances from his male leads, but what registers most is the sharpness and intensity of his primordial vision of nature and childhood experience. Nominated for an Oscar and winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice film festival, this has been described by the director as “a mythological look [at] human life,” as accurate a description as any I’ve encountered."

-- Jonathan Rosenbaum