In a period when there continue to be several calls in "the West" to boycott Russian culture, Russian filmmakers continue to make films and Russian film reviewers continue to make podcasts. Through one of these podcasts, I learned about two productions that have done well in Russia in the first half of 2023 and which, as much as popular cinema can, tell us something about the preoccupations of this nation at war.

The first, "Bullfinch," is adapted from Georgii Vladimov’s novel "Three Minutes Silence" and tells the story of a shipful of fishermen trying to survive the high waves and each other’s tasteless jokes. Novices Nikita and Maxim try to adapt with varying success as different older figures take different routes in "hazing" them into the comradeship that is fishing. I use the word "hazing" advisedly, for in a country that is at war, one will look for military analogies everywhere and this ship full of men and their toxicity can easily be read as the frontline. Nikita and Maxim are then the young soldiers who do not know the rules of the game and have not been hardened by the sea, or shall we say, the conflicts Russia chooses to engage in.

The film is, in several ways, reminiscent of Andrei Zvyagintsev’s "State of Russia" films, where the younger generation is often shown to receive no love or proper guidance from the older one. The young men are received differently by two different figures on the ship and their physical features tell you immediately what kind of father figure they will be. Gennady, played by Aleksandr Robak, is on the heavier side, has a beard and dresses in woolly jumpers, every inch the Russian bear. When Nikita gets bullied by the crew, especially by the wiry Yuri, who seems to be consistently high on one substance or another, Gennady is the one who tries to take Nikita aside and explain that this is how men socialize. For his part, Yuri devises more pranks for Nikita, under the weight of which the poor boy finally loses his balance.

As it is a film set on the high seas, we must have a storm and there are harrowing scenes of the crew trying to hold on to their catch in the cold store room, which by this time houses not only the fish but also a dead body. Lest we think this fishermen’s boat is just about toxic masculinity with deadly consequences, we have the men rescue a Swedish boat crew from the same storm. Maybe Russia is not so bad after all? Perhaps it can be of help to neighboring nations.

And what makes Yuri so restless, so ready to inflict physical and psychological pain on the younger generation? It is war trauma; one may venture that he feels he needs to pass on to the younger ones so that they don’t make the mistake of thinking that the world is a good place. Just what is happening in his head? We get the answer to this in the final scene of the film, where we are finally shown the video he has been sharing with the crew and their Swedish guests. It is a drinking game that one could get away with only with a stomach of iron- is it there to show us that while he may play fast and loose with other people’s lives, he doesn’t much care for his own either? I’ll let you work out the Russia metaphor with that one.

On the road in Russia

The second film doesn’t need metaphors because it is literally about the landscape of Russia. In "Riding Wild," adapted from Anna Smolina’s memoir "Why Stay at Home?", the 30-year-old Anna decides she has had enough of the metropolis, her job and her boyfriend, and gets on a bike to go visit her estranged mother in Nizhny Novgorod. This decision seems to be precipitated by her encounter with the Uzbek food delivery guy who takes pity on her and takes her to his family home, where they are having a family dinner and where they take her to be his girlfriend. Naturally, wholesome family values are always in the pursuit of "ethnic" people and our heroine gets pensive; she realizes this is what she needs in her life. When she goes to the kitchen fridge to get something to drink, another door opens at the other end of the fridge, and it is her mother speaking to her; we understand the emptiness in her life has something to do with the way they have parted ways. But it is also a possibly unintentional metaphor for Russia feeding off ex-Soviet republics, the blond Slavic woman living at the other end of the Uzbek family’s fridge, depleting their resources.

This scene is the first in the film where a "magical" moment is inserted, and throughout her journey across the landscape of Russia, Anna’s mother appears to her at crucial moments. When she arrives in Nizhny Novgorod, she learns that her mother has moved further East to Magadan, so Anna has to keep pedaling further. The Russian bear in this film comes in the person of Valery, who is also traveling east on a bike, grizzly beard and all, with his sights set on Mongolia. They start traveling together more out of necessity and, at one point, even get into a gunfight with some locals. The scene is definitely set for romance and when it does happen, it unsettles Anna because it is clear that they must part ways.

But must they really? This film is founded on magical realism and when Anna arrives in her mum’s neck of the woods, there’s a Baikal Festival, with Turkic shamans chanting and wish trees where you bind pieces of thread to make your dreams come true. Anna's gets deferred a while because it turns out that the Russian bear is actually Belarussian and is deported when the incident with the gun comes to light. But then, of course, the magic promised at the shaman festival happens: the East cures the ailments of the West, and in a miracle sequence, Anna goes back home on a plane with everyone she loves on it. The simple message of the film is clear: at a time when Russians are finding it difficult to travel, they need to look no further than their own beautiful land that spreads over several (Turkic) nations’ territories. If you’re Russian and want foreign travel, it is literally another country out there, east of the Urals.

Films about war work more directly on lines of propaganda, and it is always interesting to try to read between the lines of films about ‘ordinary’ people made during times of war. Talking about violence by analogy and offering escapism through the landscape are just two of the ways Russian filmmakers try to make sense of the mood in the country.