In Orpheus (FID 2021), Vadim Kostrov returned as a young man to the industrial city of his youth, Nijni Taguil, in the Urals. A year later, we’re back in the same city, but in a different timeframe. Little Vadim, ten years old, carries a satchel and wears a yellow cap. The grown-up Vadim follows him as he wanders from shot to shot, day and night, in the changing light of early autumn. With zooms, overprints, velvety DV and variations of points of view, Kostrov works on forms and colours like a solitary painter. The child guides the filmmaker he’s become through the density of time. Leaves and steel merge into the same rusty colour. Although the Soviet tank, a monument to the glory of local industry, is just another game for the schoolboy astride its gun, the young, melancholic filmmaker has no need to comment on it to set darker, more painful harmonies onto the image. (Cyril Neyrat)
