Roman Mikhaylov’s series mixing autofiction, fairy tale morphology, and the masculine world of 1990s Russia will be screened in the Happy Hours program.
A Trip to the Sun and Back holds a special place in the filmography of Roman Mikhaylov, who is a mathematician, writer, mystic, theater director, and a cult Russian filmmaker of the 2020s. Adapting independent filmmaking to the industry format of a TV series and its distribution, it is also his first experiment with long narrative in film, and its seven series can be seen as seven chapters.
As a young boy, Ruslan (Oleg Chugunov) sees a bride bathing at night and falls in love with the fairy-tale image. As a teenager, he keeps thinking about her, finding her, himself, and his friends in the pages of the books of fairy tales that his grandfather saved from a magical fire in a library. Growing up amidst abandoned houses, brothels, hospitals, mysteries, gangsters, sorcerers, politicians, drugs, and playing cards—attributes of the 1990s that are as extraordinary as they are familiar to many—Ruslan still hopes to find his beloved bride.
The protagonist incorporates elements of Mikhaylov’s own biography, and the series is partially based on his novel Wait for Summer and See What Happens, which won the Andrei Bely Award in 2021. As in the novel the narrative is driven by love, and love is the lens through which Mikhaylov invites us to see our world and our past. Looking through that lens, he finds in our shared past—filled with chaos, rampages, and debauchery leading to many deaths—a certain tenderness.
The series will be screened with two 20-minute intermissions after episodes 3 and 5.
A Trip to the Sun and Back
Director: Roman Mikhaylov
Russia, 2025. 330 min
18+