Titanic Filmfesztivál

Section: World Cinema
Directed by: Aslan Galasov

Lastotski prileteli
Russia, 2007
Dir.: Aslan Galasov
Scr.: Irlan Kugayev, Aslan Galasov
Phot.: Leonid Deryagin, Anna Zabludovskaya
Editor: Olga Shevtsenko, Vitaliy Ziklinskiy
Music: Shirvani Tsalayev
Cast: Irlan Kugayev, Artur Katagov, Vyaheslav Guriyev, Soslan Tsallagov, Elina Zakarova, Leyla Tebloyeva
Format: 35 mm; Colour
90 mins
Contact: Narti Movies Film Company

www.narti-movies.ru/eng/films/full.php?bc_tovar_id=8

Film comes from a literary tradition of the decadence and refers to such books as Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide and Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. The main character, Pik is a university professor of literature and at the same time a hardcore drug addict. The story is told by the hero himself. His literary inclinations bring the lyricism and the intimacy of a personal diary into his narration, while his scholarly mindset gives it the distance and the cold detail of a documentary. It is the history of the decease, watched and described by the addict himself. He fights a moral fight trying to defeat the disease… And then swallows arrive to the provincial town, where Pik lives. But will they bring the happiness of being healed to the hero?

“Where most films about junkies revel in squalor and needles, documentarian Aslan Galazov’s dramatic debut The Swallows Have Arrived is a discreet, lyrical treatment sporting the Russian penchant for spiritual rumination. Co-scenarist Irlan Khugaev’s protag wanders around his handsome north Caucasus city of Vladikavkaz over a couple days’ course, detached from the vigorous life around him. When catharsis arrives, it’s so low-key as to be barely noticeable.” (Dennis Harvey)

See also:
	Half Moon	Hello, Stranger
	Kek	Las Cruces
	One Night in One City	Our Time
	Pao's Story	The Pope’s Toilet
	Stop Revolution	Those Three
	Tribe