Grace

A father and daughter duo traverse the vast, winding, and seemingly vacant backroads of rural Russia in a rusted, rambling van that serves as both home and transport for the adolescent and her living parent (mom travels with them in the form of ashes in an urn). Clandestine DVD sales, fleeting sexual encounters, and checkpoint-avoiding detours signal the outlaw lifestyle these two share as they slowly, inevitably drift apart. The “road movie” is about as familiar a genre as any in motion pictures, which is what makes Ilya Povolotsky’s debut fiction feature, which premiered at the 2023 Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes, such a discovery. Echoes of Tarkovsky quiver in the frosty landscapes as we sense the possibility of escape, of individuality.