Garage Screen’s joint program with the 32nd Kinotavr Open Russian Film Festival

One of the main Russian films of the year, Kira Kovalenko’s drama Unclenching the Fists, tells the story of a girl trying to free herself from a traumatic past and the pressure of the patriarchal order. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Kira Kovalenko, producer Alexander Rodnyansky and screenwriter Anton Yarush.

A film actress and a migrant worker from Kyrgyzstan, who has fainted at her door, find themselves self-isolated in one St. Petersburg apartment. Grigoriy Dobrygin’s new film is a minimal and cleverly written comedy about closeness and alienation—the two notions that have acquired new meanings during the pandemic. Garage Screen summer cinema will show the film’s Moscow premiere, followed by a Q&A with its director Grigoriy Dobrygin, writer Anton Yarush, and production designer Andrey Ponkratov.

Leningrad, 1938: law enforcer Volkonogov finds out that he will forever suffer in hell for his crimes against humanity—torturing and murdering innocent people. His only chance to avoid such fate is by repenting and being forgiven by at least one of his victims. The new work by Natasha Merkulova and Aleksey Chupov is perhaps the first in the history of the new Russian film to revisit the frightening, cyclical, and once again concealed reality of Soviet Russia through art comics. At Garage Screen summer cinema, the film will be introduced by the directors Natasha Merkulova and Aleksey Chupov and followed by a Q&A.