SILENT SOULS / OVSYANKI

Russia, 2010, 78 minutes, Colour.
Igor Sergeev, Yuliya Aug, Yuriy Tsurilo.
Directed by Aleksei Fedorchenko.

A film for festival audiences, a prize winner, including a SIGNIS award in Venice 2010.

This is a mood film, running for under 80 minutes. It has elements of Russian melancholy as a loner storyteller travels with his factory boss to perform the funeral rites for the boss’s dead wife.

The loner narrates a story, explaining himself, his mother, his depressed and alcoholic poet father. At the market, he is persuaded to buy two buntings in a cage (the meaning of the Russian title). There are flashbacks to his family, treatment by his father and the father’s funeral, as the two men travel along the roads of northern Russia. The landscapes are grey and bleak, the towns rather drab and industrial, the countryside, forests and lakes, are cold and wintry.

But, the story is also that of the boss and his love for his young wife (also shown in flashback) and his traditional chatter during the journey where he opens up about his feelings.

Because the Russians from this part of the vast country are close to Finnish tribes of the past, they have idiosyncratic beliefs and traditions. This is true of the rites for the wife: buying sturdy poles for building a platform where the body (which we have seen prepared, washed and clothed in meditative detail) is brought out of the car, where it has been wrapped in a blanket, then solemnly burned, the ashes collected and scattered in the waters.

The buntings cause an unexpected ending to the film (though the narrator had alerted us to it), leaving the audience with their reflections and their melancholy.


1. The impact of the film? For Russian audiences? For international audiences? Festival and arthouse audiences? Prizes, including the Catholic prize in Venice?

2. The bleak Russian settings, the town and the description of the town, the visuals? The countryside, the open expanses, the lake? The bigger towns, the bridges? The feel for northern Russia? The atmospheric score?

3. Aist and his narrative? His description of himself, in the town, his artwork? His buying the bunting birds? In the cage? His description of his life in the town, isolation?

4. His work in the factory? His meeting with Miron, summoned to his office? The news of Tanya’s death? Miron’s request that Aist help him with the funeral arrangements? Aist and his agreement?

5. The preparation of the body for burial, the long sequence, the single shot, washing the body, clothing the body? Taking it to the car? A sense of ritual? The journey along the countryside? The talk between the two men, the explanation that the grieving man wanted to talk a great deal – and did? The passing landscape? Arriving at the river?

6. The body, lying on the sand, the blanket? The setting up of the funeral pyre after buying the poles in the shop? The burning? The collection of the ashes? Taking them out in the boat, distributing the ashes in the water? The explanations of the traditions for this kind of burial ritual?

7. The return home, the pair getting lost? Going to the old city, on the outskirts of the larger city? The changes?

8. The two men after the funeral, Miron nh not wanting to talk about his wife so much? His memories, the flashbacks, his pride in his wife, the socials in the town, the gatherings? As a character, her beauty, her size, her age, her devotion to Miron? But people questioning this? The build-up to her death? Miron and his expressions of his admiration and love for his wife?

9. The symbolism of the birds, in the cage, their attempts at flight? The build-up to the accident? Aist and his saying they would not survive the trip and see their town again?

10. The accident itself, the birds getting free, disturbing the driver, the crash and the car going into the river? Death?

11. Aist, his reflection on his life, on this part of Russia, on its development and lack of development? Of people, their lives? The travels and the glimpses of ordinary people – especially on the bridge, on the ferry? An authentic feel for life for these people?

12. The quality of life, the title – life and death?