Film Forum

From the director of GUNDA. “Victor Kossakovsky is a sensual formalist, a theorist, ethicist and one of the great documentarians alive… The striking black and white images in THE BELOVS move back and forth between straightforward intimacy and wild lyricism, with passages of joyously evocative music helping to create a sense of lived-in and breathing poetry. Sometimes wickedly funny and oftentimes tender, the film is pure cinema.” – Robert Greene, Nonfics.  This acclaimed observational documentary, set on a Russian farm, is at once an intimate, mesmerizing portrait of a family as well as a depiction of the absurdities of ordinary life. Widow Anna and grizzled brother Michael are iconic Russians: given to inebriated philosophical rants and arguments about matters large and small. (“Drink your tea and park your tractor properly” is a typical riposte from Anna.) Rarely screened, THE BELOVS nonetheless appears on any number of lists of “Best Documentaries Ever.”

RUSSIA     1992     58 MINS.     IN RUSSIAN WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES

Reviews

“An outstanding documentary, which reveals how extraordinary and full of emotions ‘ordinary' life can be; how families are torn by conflict but try to overcome difficulties. The regular Russian people are portrayed in a realistic light, with no sugar coating of their personalities or lives. And even more significantly, THE BELOVS is a movie that can cause audiences to go from one end of the emotional spectrum to the other, from laughing at the animals misbehaving to crying with Anna. This film can truly be called a masterpiece.”
– Suzana Dalul, Vox Magazine