Director

Philipp Yuryev

Russia, Poland, Belgium | 2020 | 90 min | Russian, English, Chukchi

• Producer Alexey Uchitel
• Production Company Rock Films, Orka, Man's Films Productions
• Screenplay Philipp Yuryev
• Cinematography Mikhail Khursevich, Yakov Mironchev
• Editing Karolina  Maciejewska, Alexander Krylov, Philipp Yuryev
• Sound David Vrancken
• Cast Vladimir Onokhov, Kristina Asmus, Vladimir Lyubimtsev, Nikolay Tatato, Arieh Worthalter, Maria Chuprinskaya
• Contacts

  Rock Films Studio

  polina@rockfilms.ru

About the Film

Teenage boys the world over want just a few basic things: buddies to hang out with, a safe home space where unconditional love is unfussy but real, and of course, girls. That’s all well and good in most places, but when you’re living in a tiny fishing village located in one of the most remote areas on earth with barely any women and lousy internet connections, what’s a guy to do? In the hands of debuting feature film director Philipp Yuryev, the premise becomes a perceptive, often humorous, and always sympathetic look at what happens when hormones and globalization crash together, leaving a likeably naïve young man literally looking for his bearings in the Bering Sea.

Like most everyone else in his isolated village on the eastern reaches of coastal Siberia, Leshka is a whale hunter. Recreation options are even more limited than the female population, so he and the other men try to slake their thirst for companionship in virtual erotic chat rooms, even though the wifi connection is so bad that their frustrations only multiply. Leshka imagines things are getting personal between him and one of the blonde camgirls, so he sets off for the nearby coast of Alaska, determined to find his love. The internet brings a tantalizing, phantom taste of the world outside, yet notwithstanding the limitations of life in such an isolated spot, there really is no place like home. The Whaler Boy received the GdA Director’s Award after its premiere at the Venice Days.

"Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that 'all men are created equal.' We now practically read it 'all men are created equal, except negroes.' When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read 'all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and catholics.' When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy." Abraham Lincoln, 24 August, 1855

Jay Weissberg