A family film about a boy, birds, an open heart, and a child’s imagination—a viewers’ favourite from Yakut filmmaker Mikhail Lukachevsky.
Vanya is eight and he is leaving the hospital, where he was admitted with a broken spine as a baby. In the hospital he was surrounded by white walls, a white ceiling, and white uniforms. He even saw himself as completely white. But when Vanya returns to his village, his world becomes colorful.
He discovers he is a Sakha and has parents and brothers and a native land. He notices the sadness of his father, left alone with four children, the jealousy and the vengefulness of the village chief, the loneliness of the old woman Nerugay—the local witch who has a photo camera instead of a broom. And along with these everyday things, he notices wonders: giraffes walking in a field near the village, and dancing White cranes. Vanya’s mother, as his father says, was reborn as one of these sacred birds.
Magic and realism are as closely intertwined in the Yakut worldview as are folklore and Soviet elements in Yakut culture (the film is set in the 1960s). The unaffected perspective of a child makes these connections seem even more natural. To Vanya, anything imaginable is possible.
The film’s director and producer, Mikhail Lukachevsky, wrote the screenplay ten years ago, but at the time struggled to find funding for a heartwarming movie, so he is best known for his darker works: the fable The White Day about a car frozen on the road and the thriller Helicopter, where the protagonist travels to the regional center to save a sick child. Experimenting with a new genre, Lukachevsky does not avoid tension—his social critique can be seen in the villagers’ bias against Nerugay and the situation in which Vanya finds himself, moved from the hospital to his home bed and left without any medical support, his family left alone to face the consequences of an old injury. But, following the rules of the genre, Lukachevsky keeps changing the tone and finding a funny or fantastic resolution to any tense situation.
The film will be screened in Yakut with Russian subtitles.
After the screening there will be a discussion with director Mikhail Lukachevsky and producer Valeria Motorueva.
Where the White Cranes Dance
Mikhail Lukachevsky
Russia, 2024. 95 min. 16+