On November 9, a new film by director Anna Melikyan (“The Mermaid”, “Tenderness”) “Anna’s Feelings” is released in Russian theaters, in which a chocolate factory worker suddenly begins to hear the voices of aliens. What they talk about and what the f...

Perm, present day, Russians on the verge of conquering Mars. Employees of a chocolate factory perform routine work: security checkpoint, disinfection, masks on faces and caps on heads, then a long working day. This day is distinguished only by a severed finger of one of the women who work at the machines from bell to bell. Anna Borodina (Anna Mikhalkova) also does her small but very “important” work, like everyone here, for the sake of her family and their well-being. Her familiar and stable life is shattered when, after falling on ice, she begins to hear the thoughts of something or someone interplanetary.

Life as It Is

In recent decades, the Russian hinterland has become a close object of filmmakers, and if earlier the main characters were residents (albeit often visitors!) of Moscow or St. Petersburg, now the trend is rather towards small stories of the regions. And if in some films the “hinterland” is shown with an absolutely negative connotation (“Leviathan”, “To Live” 2011), in others with a positive-romanticized one (“She’s Gone”, “Relatives”), there is little neutral and ordinary, in a good sense.

“Anna’s Feelings” is a well-made film from an artistic point of view. It vividly but down-to-earthly shows all the locations. Here is a small apartment with photo wallpaper of palm trees in the kitchen, bordering on an ordinary hall (not a living room!) and an old fold-out sofa in it; and a professor’s house with endless bookshelves and volumes of Pushkin; and a candy factory, reminiscent of either a Soviet Palace of Culture or a spaceship.

In all the sets, one feels the endless warmth with which they were created. They also fully reflect each of the inhabitants. Space is also shown unusually beautifully and mesmerizingly, without spending billions on production (hello, “The Challenge”).

Nadezhda Vasilyeva

In Space, But Not About Space. Review of “The Challenge” — the Main Russian Film of 2023

The most anticipated and loudest premiere of Russian film production — the film “The Challenge” — has been released. The first film shot aboard the ISS, with real cosmonauts and in zero gravity. M

Open material

Save Each Other

Feelings and sensuality live in each of us. From them grow all other emotions, and they shape perception and attitude towards something. “Anna’s Feelings” shows us this process from the outside. The theme of constant presence and intrusion into private life is incredibly popular, and here it is fully realized. From the cameraman who delves into the most hidden corners of the soul, to the camera of the main character’s son, who decided to become a streamer. The content of the broadcasts is, of course, quite specific, and the desire to find something very secret and screamingly popular is high.

However, Anna’s feelings are truly important: through her, as through a conduit, which many consider her to be, the alien speaks. To touch the new Jesus Christ, as her husband (Timofey Tribuntsev) jokingly calls her, now everyone wants — both ordinary people seeking salvation for themselves and their loved ones, and Chinese TV crews, and those who study space for new life. The role of a conduit, which by its nature exists only when current flows, is fleeting, and its task is to convey the main thing — energy, or, as in our case, a thought.

Russian cinema, unlike foreign, uses aliens as an expression of a pacifist statement. “Love each other” — that is the main key to saving humanity, because everything cosmic is interconnected, and if some die, others will die too. Perhaps this thought is the main thing in the film, because it is as beautiful, deep and infinite as space, but also sometimes as eerie and lonely.

Anna Mikhalkova’s character fully reflects this. In her, as in the entire film “Anna’s Feelings”, kindness and malice, naturalness and “constructedness”, love and hatred are combined. In these contradictions lies the essence of the film, its play with the audience, because the question of whether we can be tender with each other will remain until the end.

Is Mars Cool?

Space, in the films of Anna Melikyan, has appeared at least once before — in the character of Evgeny Tsyganov, who sold land on the Moon in “The Mermaid”. In “Anna’s Feelings”, things are more complicated. On one hand, it is everywhere: posters “Mars is ours!” hang on the streets, volunteers are selected at the chocolate factory, and TV presenter Ekaterina Andreeva from Channel One details every step on the path to conquering the new planet, coexisting with news of mass infections of an unknown deadly disease. On the other hand, the images of little green men, who have a monument somewhere near Perm, are completely simple thoughts about kindness and acceptance of each other, thousands of similar texts on the internet. The line between reality and a possible projection of Anna’s true desires is very thin.

“Humanity is not ready for a flight to Mars” — and maybe it’s true? In a world where love and humanity have to be taught as something very complex and unattainable, there are enough problems of its own. Perhaps we need to make the planet as desirable as that Mars on which everyone pins their hopes. And then maybe, on the earth where we live, it will also become cool?!

Trailer: