20/10/2021 - Russian-born director Aleksey Lapin's first feature-length film is a hybrid-documentary portrait of a village on the Russian-Ukrainian border

Russian-born, Vienna-based filmmaker Aleksey Lapin's first feature-length film, Krai [+see also:
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A black-and-white hybrid documentary, Krai (lit. "The Country") is a portrait of the village of Jutanovka on the Russian-Ukrainian border, where Lapin stages a casting call for a historical feature film set in his home town. He lures the villagers into participating, and they slowly start revealing themselves and their deepest aspirations to the camera. Between auditions and family meetings, strange things start to happen: while cars inexplicably break down in the middle of the road, rumours about electromagnetism start floating around. When one day a power outage occurs, the director’s mother appears in the village to meet her family. Her son and his film crew, though, have mysteriously disappeared. Before the blackout ends, life seems to resume its natural rhythm in the village, now free from the filmmaking.

A self-conscious, tongue-in-cheek comment on the state of film as an art and the corruption of cinema by greed and profit, Krai follows the satirical tradition of Jonathan Swift, highlighting the fantastical sides of reality. Whether it’s a lone misfit who wants to release his bird from its cage or a woman who is covering her children’s room with new wallpaper, Krai shows a village whose hidden stories need just a bit of magic in order to be conjured up.

The film was produced by Thomas Herberth and Florian Brüning for Horse&Fruits, and will premiere at the Viennale on 22 October, while its international premiere at DOK Leipzig will take place on 27 October. Austria’s Sixpack Films handles the international rights.

Check out our exclusive trailer below: