Ossetian-language film nominated for an Oscar: why it was criticized even before its release - ForumDaily
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Ossetian-language film nominated for 'Oscar': why it was criticized even before its release

The Ossetian film "Unclenching his fists" by the young director Kira Kovalenko and producer Alexander Rodnyansky received a prize in Cannes and was nominated by Russia for an Oscar. But even before the film was released, Ossetia feared that it would blacken the Republic. Why did these fears arise and were they justified? with the BBC.

Photo: Shutterstock

Movie plot (with spoilers)

Kira Kovalenko is a graduate of the Kabardino-Balkarian workshop of director Alexander Sokurov, who trained 12 young directors in Nalchik for five years. Kovalenko’s classmates in the workshop, Kantemir Balagov and Vladimir Bitokov, also achieved success at international festivals with films shot in the Caucasus and about the Caucasus. Then they started talking about the possible appearance of their own cinema in Nalchik and Vladikavkaz.

“Unclenching His Fists” is completely filmed in Ossetian; in Moscow cinema it is shown with Russian subtitles. This is a story about a family led by an oppressive father who controls his three almost adult children to the point that he does not give them the keys to the house and hides his daughter's passport so that she cannot go to the city and have an operation.

The main character is the same daughter of Ada, who really needs this operation due to a trauma in the past. She is so eager to escape from her father's overprotectiveness that she invites her brothers to simply leave and leave their father alone when he becomes ill - in the hope that he will die and the problem will disappear by itself.

"A fraction of colonial stamps"

Anna Kabisova, organizer of the Cinematheque Vladikavkaz cinema club, said that films in the Ossetian language are released regularly.

“But these are all local films. They will not be interesting even outside the Republic, much less the country,” she notes.

And the graduates of Sokurov’s workshop were followed in the circles of film lovers in the Caucasus from the very beginning - and became interested when it became known about filming in Ossetia.

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Kabisova admitted that for six months now—since the film was selected for Cannes—her film club has been constantly discussing “Unclenching My Fists,” no matter what movie they watched before.

So they started talking about the picture in Ossetia long before it was released on the screens.

“It was ridiculous: people still don’t know anything about the film, but from the information that was in the trailer and from the short description they concluded that the film denigrates Ossetia,” Anna recalls those disputes. — Our famous bloggers and journalists, when Cannes passed, held a stream discussing the film. They themselves had not yet watched it. They said: the trailer and information about the father who, in the story, hid his daughter’s passport is enough for us: they say, this is impossible in Ossetia.”

One of these bloggers was Alik Pukhaev. But when Unclenching Fists hit theaters, he saw the movie and changed his mind. Pukhaev wrote a review and admitted that he had previously judged the film by other people's reviews.

“Experts, critics and the media presented this film to us as a work that attacks the very heart of the domestic patriarchy - the North Caucasus,” he wrote, referring to Anton Dolin’s review. “All the reviews are stuffed with colonial, chauvinistic cliches about the Caucasus.” According to the blogger, these stamps are not in the picture.

Another “subtle” place in the film is the bed scene with the participation of the main character. Anna Kabisova, who watched the premiere in a cinema in Vladikavkaz, noticed that at this moment the audience was giggling and “reacting like a child.”

“Indeed, it is not customary for us to discuss this, much less show it. But Ossetia is different from neighboring republics, which are more closed and Islamic,” Kabisova emphasizes. For example, her friends from Chechnya come to Vladikavkaz specifically to watch films that are unacceptable to be shown in their Republic.

"It's all like magic, but it's real."

Now two camps have formed in Ossetia: the defenders of the film and those who condemned this picture in advance and therefore, in principle, do not go to watch it.

Anna Kabisova is very proud and happy for the director Kira Kovalenko and the entire team of the film.

“This is an incredible story, and not only because the film was shot in Ossetia in the Ossetian language. This is an example for inspiration. There are many young people here who dream of making films and are slowly doing so. It is clear that this is all bad. But Kira is one of us, and she made this film, and it's all like magic, but it's real. You have to be happy, take an example and shoot something too,” she says.

Self-taught directors or those who have recently graduated from theater universities without the support of famous directors find it difficult to get funding for their projects, Anna is upset. Perhaps now the situation will begin to change.

The main complaint in the Republic about the film is that the film shows the Caucasian patriarchy, deliberately using this theme in order to present the Caucasus as an exotic, almost wild place. Anna Kabisova is convinced that “Unclenching Fists” is not about that at all.

In the film, the father of the family really behaves authoritarianly: he does not let his teenage son into school, does not give the children keys - only he has the right to unlock the door and let (or not let) the children into the street.

Daughter Ada needs an operation, but her father does not allow her to go to the hospital in the city and even hides her passport so that she does not leave secretly.

But towards the end we find out why he behaves this way. Through randomly thrown words, the family’s past is outlined: we understand that the reason for paternal overprotection is fear for the children.

The militants' attack on a school in Beslan took away his wife and crippled Ada, and the world outside the apartment seems to his father to be simply dangerous.

“I do not perceive the film as a social cast and an attempt to talk about the situation of women in the Caucasus. This topic exists, but it is not the main one, says Anna. “When you understand what’s behind it, you understand why my father is like this.” It’s not that he’s despotic or selfish, he’s afraid to let his daughter go into a world where they can kill and maim. This is his psychological trauma, he can’t get out of it - and he doesn’t let his daughter. This is a father's attempt to keep his children like chicks in a nest, not realizing that he is only making things worse. But this is not his fault - that tragedy is to blame.”

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Kabisova believes that building the film’s conflict around the events in Beslan is not an exploitation of the theme, but a natural move for a story about Ossetia.

“It’s the same as showing a mountain landscape. This is present everywhere, it is part of us - in the subconscious, in the psyche of people. Everyone is traumatized in one way or another by this tragedy,” she explains.

"One on one with tragedy"

For blogger Alik Pukhaev, who finally watched the film and praised it, the story is not about the patriarchal traditions of the Caucasus. Instead, it's about the loss of tradition and community support. This, he believes, is what is destroying Ada’s family.

“In the family, all boundaries and family roles typical for the Caucasus have been violated - the world of this family collapsed during the terrorist attack, their further life is an attempt to survive after the apocalypse,” in his review Pukhaev drew attention to details noticeable only to viewers immersed in the local culture.

For example, the father is not asked, as expected, for permission to leave the table, and the son greets his elders disrespectfully without leaving the car - all cultural codes have been erased, the blogger writes, and this is what scares him in the film.

“We don’t see our extended family, our father’s numerous brothers and sisters, who would help tear down the fabric of this oppressive family atmosphere, who would once again give the children a chance for socialization,” Pukhaev emphasizes. “Kira Kovalenko showed us how scary it is to be alone with a tragedy, without support, without the colossal inclusive resource that our culture possesses.”

Possible exoticisation of the Caucasus in the West and clichés worry Anna Kabisova, but she hopes that in Cannes and at other festivals they will not look at the heroes of the picture with a sense of superiority.

“I still think that smart, subtle guys are sitting there and looking from the position of discovering unknown cultures, and for them this is not some savage, but a new point on the map,” she hopes.

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