Alexei Buldakov Movies

Blokpost is a film about the madness of war. Somewhere in the Caucasus, which looks like Chechnya, a dirty war is raging. There are no battlefields as such, but every peasant is either a suspect or a victim. During a raid on a village, young Russian soldiers are unable to prevent the death of a child, killed by a land mine. The child's mother shoots the village policeman in her grief and is shot herself by the panicking soldiers, who are posted to a remote check point for thirty days as a punishment. Although they don't actually see the enemy in the darkness of the forest, they hear the intermittent snipers and imagine its presence behind every tree. The film, which is shot in quasi-documentary style, aims at displaying the madness of war in which everyone suffers, including the soldiers. Blokpost was screened as part of the Panorama section of the 49th International Berlin Film Festival, 1999. ~ Gönül Dönmez-Colin, Rovi

Sporting a number of in-jokes which refer to persons and events in Russian film history, this is a comedy drama about Shura (Olga Yevtushenko), a young girl growing up in the Russia of the 1920s who wants with all her heart to become a movie star like Mary Pickford. She keeps this desire to herself. Model young Communist Party Pioneer that she is (the Pioneers were communism's answer to the Girl Scouts, with a heavy dose of political education thrown in), Shura attempts to correct bourgeois "wrong thinking" in her family and community. As her true ambitions become known, however, she increasingly upsets the political sensitivities of those around her, until she is forced to take a train to Moscow to escape her outraged community. Highlights include a re-created silent film. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

In this slapstick Russian comedy Raivo, a young Finnish researcher journeys to rural Russia to observe the hunting customs there. The story begins with a posh picnic attended by elegant people speaking French and eating rare delicacies; it is winter and a few dozen people are waiting for a horn to sound and the hunt to begin. Suddenly a horn is heard, but it belongs to a car. The horn awakens the Fin and soon he is surrounded by the real hunters, a band of high-ranking army officers who are allowed to hunt in a restricted military area. Their idea of hunting involves drinking whole cases of vodka, stumbling about trying unsuccessfully to avoid the many cow pies, and setting off fireworks. Real chaos ensues when a Russian bear cub ambles into a sauna filled with drunken soldiers. Meanwhile, poor Raivo asks, "When do we begin the hunt?" The others are too busy having fun to care and eventually Raivo returns to Finland without having learned a thing about Russian hunting customs. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Most stories about prison brutality are set among the prisoners. This unusual feature follows the initiation period of a new guard who has come onto a train taking prisoners to forced labor camps (gulags). Each day, the train travels farther from "civilization," and each day, the brutal treatment the guards mete out to the prisoners and the rough games they play on each other grow in ferocity and barbarity. The new guard somehow bears the progressive dehumanization of himself and his fellow guards, until something happens and he loses all control. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi