Vodkafabriken

Valya, who is from the town of Zhigulyovsk in Russia's Samara Oblast, loves nice clothes and make-up, and also dreams of becoming an actress. However, she spends most of her time working in a vodka-packing plant and getting drunk with her girlfriends in the evening. She lives with her mother Tatyana and her young son Danila. Both women have walked out on their alcoholic and physically violent husbands. However, when Tatyana gets together with an old flame from her youth, Valya refuses to share a roof with her mother's new partner. She moves to Moscow, leaving Tatyana having to choose between living with a man she loves once again and a grandson abandoned by his mother. Director Jerzy Sladkowski presents an incredibly intimate picture of protagonists experiencing the everyday bitterness of life without a future. While the vodka keeps flowing, either abroad or only as far as local tables, the women desperately seek their place in the world. Dreams of love dissolve in a banal environment devoid of heroes or miracles. (One World)