Svobodnoe plavanie

20-year-old Lyonya lives in a small town on the Volga, where nothing ever happens. The only factory has closed down and the job centre has nothing to offer. While the redundant workers savour their utopian dreams and their drink, Lyonya tries selling shoes as a stallholder, since life as a bricklayer or cleaner doesn't appeal to him. He spends a few days working with road menders, but he hasn't got the temperament for shifty moonlighting jobs. The girls in the town are insolent – the girls down the disco and his former classmates as well. This is probably the reason the local lads opt for military service. But Lyonya's integrity and decency are rewarded. By coincidence, he is given a chance for self-fulfilment; it might be challenging and unprofitable, but he gets an opportunity to act like a real man with independence... The director took his theme from a real environment where life in the provinces is nothing but wretched. Its hopelessness seeps into people's psyches and paralyses any notion of social integration. The depiction of the psychopathology of everyday life in ordinary modes of existence is evoked by the infamous Russian timelessness. (Karlovy Vary International Film Festival)