The New York Times by Dave Kehr
A strange, disturbing and yet occasionally quite funny cultural artifact from the new Russia.
✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
Russia · 1998
1h 35m
Director Pyotr Lutsik
Starring Yuriy Dubrovin, Nikolay Olyalin, Aleksei Pushkin, Aleksey Vanin
Genre Drama
Please login to add films to your watchlist.
Set on the Russian steppes and filmed in black-and-white, it is the story of a group of peasants seeking revenge against the oil company that bought the collective farm from beneath their feet and the return of their land. During the entire film, it does not stop snowing once. As the peasants make their way across the frozen tundra toward the city that houses oil company headquarters, they take vengeance against a series of former Communist bureaucrats who connived with oil company executives. Except for the youth Kolya that they have drafted into their crusade against the protestations of his babushka-wearing mother, they are all grizzled veterans of WWII.
We hate to say it, but we can't find anywhere to view this film.
The New York Times by Dave Kehr
A strange, disturbing and yet occasionally quite funny cultural artifact from the new Russia.
Lutsik takes aim at reckless capitalism --- as well as the increasing Westernization of Russian filmmaking --- with a disquieting allegory that in both themes and aesthetic is an audacious throwback to pre-WWII Soviet cinema formalism.
Increasingly violent (although always distanced), The Outskirts is at once appalling and bleakly humorous.
Chicago Reader by Jonathan Rosenbaum
Grim, phantasmagoric view of recent and not-so-recent Russian history.
The Outskirts, handsomely directed by Petr Lutsik, will grab people's emotions. The dark and bitter comedy deals with a corrupt, post-communist Russia.
The sexually charged odyssey of Dr. Bill Hartford, shocked after his wife reveals she contemplated an affair a year earlier.
A film director suffers creative block as he prepares his next movie and navigates the relationships of his life.
A young woman cursed with old age seeks the help of an insecure magician and his companions, who live in a moving castle.
When humans invade a distant planet, a man sent to study the indigenous aliens struggles to choose sides.
In the far future, an inexperienced team aims to win the Galactik Football Cup.
Danila returns!
A computer hacker is tasked with solving an impossible mathematical problem whose solution is supposed to reveal the meaning of life.
A poor family lies and schemes their way into the employ of a wealthy household — successfully, but with great consequences.
Two British soldiers race to deliver a message that will stop over 1,000 men from walking into a German ambush.