A loyal dog outlives his purpose in Soviet collapse. You will cry. Hard.
Acting
The dog. Seriously. Ruslan's performance is unbearably real.
Direction
Khmelnytskyi lets silence and snow do the talking.
Director
Volodymyr Khmelnytskyi
Aleksey Batalov
рассказчик
Evgeniy Nikitin
Хозяин Руслана
Leonid Yanovskyi
Потёртый
Lidiya Fedoseyeva-Shukshina
Тетя Стюра
Sergey Pozhogin
Инструктор
Mykola Sektymenko
Капитан НКВД
Aleksei Kolesnik
Расстрельный
Vladimir Alekseyenko
Priest
Bohdan Beniuk
Бульдозерист
Taras Kirejko
Тарас Кирейко
Mykhailo Ihnatov
Заключённый
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Based on Georgi Vladimov's 1975 novel, banned in the USSR until glasnost. The film captures the specific post-Soviet despair of 1992 — institutions crumbling, meaning evaporating.
Ruslan represents the Soviet 'new man' — loyal, trained, useless after the system dies. The film asks: what happens to true believers when belief ends?
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