The New York Times by Dave Kehr
A strange, disturbing and yet occasionally quite funny cultural artifact from the new Russia.
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Russia · 1998
1h 35m
Director Pyotr Lutsik
Starring Yuriy Dubrovin, Nikolay Olyalin, Aleksei Pushkin, Aleksey Vanin
Genre Drama
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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.
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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.
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