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SFFILM Festival

The Postman’s White Nights

Directed by Andrei Konchalovsky

Russia | 101

28 Apr
Tue, Apr 28, 2015 at 6:15 pm PT

Description

Though pushing 60, postman Lyokha (Aleksey Tryapitsyn) is among the younger members of his sparse Lake Kenozeno island community, located in the remote northwestern Russian region of Arkhangelsk. He uses a government-issued speedboat to pick up mail from the mainland and then deliver it to his mostly elderly, isolated rural customers. While they’ve lived full lives, in some respects he’s still waiting for his to start—without wife or children (a prior marriage didn’t work out), he’s a naturally social fellow leading a haplessly solitary existence. The blare of glitzy TV programming provides comical contrast to a simple domestic life that in many ways has scarcely changed over generations. Making perhaps his smallest, loosest film on his home turf late in a career that sprawled from major Soviet epics to Hollywood projects and beyond, Andrei Konchalovsky charts a few leisurely yet eventful days during this near-Arctic area’s high summer season. Gormless Lyokha bonds with young Timur (Timur Bondarenko), but can’t make headway with his mother Irina (Irina Ermolova), whose plans to get out of this backwater provide no room for romance with a bumpkin. A local matriarch passes on; a nearby military “spaceport” is visited; our hero’s nights are haunted by the mysterious appearances of an unfamiliar cat. A work crisis nearly drives him back to that “damned vodka” after two years’ sobriety. The Postman’s White Nights is one of those films in which “nothing happens,” yet every moment seems full of life—humorous, rueful, occasionally a bit surreal. Using mostly nonprofessional actors, Konchalovsky has crafted a poetical miniature as seemingly offhand in storytelling terms as it is frequently ravishing in visual ones. —Dennis Harvey

Director Andrei Konchalovsky

Born in 1937 Moscow, Andrei Konchalovsky abandoned classical piano studies for the cinema when he began collaborating with Andrei Tarkovsky. He made his own feature directorial debut with The First Teacher (1964); Asya’s Happiness (1966) was hailed as a classic after two decades’ official suppression. Moving to the US in 1980, he made an eclectic assortment of English-language films including the Oscar-nominated Runaway Train (1985). In more recent years he’s worked in Russia, Europe and the US, his projects encompassing theater, television, and big-screen features from the Chechnya-set House of Fools (2003) to The Nutcracker in 3D (2010).

Trailer

//player.vimeo.com/video/122138216?autoplay=1

Film Details

Language Russian

Original Language Title Belye nochi pochtalona Alekseya Tryapitsyna

Year 2014

Premiere North American

Runtime 101

Country Russia

Director Andrei Konchalovsky

Producer Andrei Konchalovsky

Writer Andrei Konchalovsky, Elena Kiseleva

Editor Sergei Taraskin

Cinematographer Aleksander Simonov

Music Eduard Artemyev

Cast Aleksey Tryapitsyn, Irina Ermolova, Timur Bondarenko