Twilight Portrait

Marina is going through a deep marital and professional crisis. Every day, she comes up against indifference and widespread violence – as a child psychologist, she deals with children in difficult family situations. One day she is attacked and raped on the street. When she finds the people responsible for this crime, the various segments of her life start to redefine themselves. Sexual violence, feelings of uneasiness, and the unpredictability of life, against the backdrop of present-day Russia ridden with social conflict. The picture was filmed with digital cameras, in natural light, with no makeup for the main actress. It is a thriller with the sensitivity of a grand feminine narrative, without moralizing.

“The film is less a portrait of institutional corruption than a social and psychological study of the new Russia, the haves and the have-nots, those confined to an empty middle-class world, and an apparently unreformable “underworld” (the world of Marina’s clients), of which the police themselves seem to be part. Beautifully paced and directed, the performances by Dihovichnaya (who co-wrote the script) and Borisov exhibit an unusual degree of identification and insight.”

Peter Hames, London FF