Screened as part of NZIFF 2015

The Fool 2014

Durak

Directed by Yury Bykov World

Writer-director-editor-composer Yury Bykov’s electrically paced, flawlessly performed suspense drama is both a brutal metaphor for the corruption of post-Soviet Russia and a furiously entertaining thriller.

Jul 28

Light House Cinema Petone

Jul 30

Paramount Bergman

Aug 03

Paramount Bergman

Aug 07

Paramount

Russia In Russian with English subtitles
121 minutes CinemaScope / DCP

Director, Screenplay, Editor, Music

Producers

Aleksey Uchitel
,
Kira Saksaganskaya

Photography

Kirill Klepalov

Production designer

Stanislav Novak

Costume designer

Olga Pogodina

With

Artem Bystrov (Dmitry Nikitin)
,
Nataliya Surkova (Nina Galaganova)
,
Boris Nevzorov (Fedotov)
,
Kirill Polukhin (Matyugin)
,
Darya Moroz (Masha)
,
Yury Tsurilo (Bogatchev)
,
Aleksandr Korshunov (father)
,
Olga Samoshina (mother)

Festivals

Locarno
,
Vancouver
,
Busan 2014
,
New Directors/New Films 2015

Elsewhere

The lives of hundreds are at stake in this compulsive Russian suspense drama that does double service as a vehement exposé of a society devoured by crony capitalism. Investigating a burst pipe in a decaying provincial housing project, plumber and student engineer Dima (Artem Bystrov) discovers two massive cracks running the length of the building. Realising that the block is about to collapse, he decides that the mayor must be alerted at once, even if it’s the night of her 50th birthday celebration. The party is in no mood for whistle-blowing plumbers, but faced with Dima’s mounting alarm, the assembled councillors and contractors sober up enough to recognise what scams a fatal collapse might expose.

“The third film of writer-director Yury Bykov, The Fool is also his best. An explosive combination of highly personal moral drama and a wider, scathing portrait of a country in which corruption and greed seem to be the only shared values left, this well-oiled narrative machine is further aided by a clever ticking-clock mechanism that actually ratchets up the tension the longer the characters’ vodka-soaked, blame-game speeches are allowed to go on...

Bykov wrote, directed and edited the film and also composed the music… He has cast Artem Bystrov in the lead, whose Average Joe countenance hides a startling intensity… Nataliya Surkova is fantastic as the orders-barking mayor who realizes that 800 potential deaths would be a disaster – if she’s blamed for it.” — Boyd van Hoeij, Hollywood Reporter 

“Such people are very rare today. We call them romantic, altruistic, idealistic or simply ‘fools’ to stress that they do not act normal in a time when cynicism, fear and indifference have become the norm. Such ‘fools’ still exist in my country, and it gives hope.” — Yury Bykov