LOVELESS

Boris and Zhenya are getting divorced. They argue constantly, sell their shared flat and are already settling into new lives: he with his younger, pregnant girlfriend, she with a wealthy lover who wants to marry her. Neither of them has any interest in their twelve-year-old son Alyosha. One night he overhears that neither parent wants to keep him. The next morning he is gone – and it takes two days before the school calls and the parents even notice. In “Loveless” (Russia 2017), Andrey Zvyagintsev tells of a search that becomes a reckoning with a country.

What follows is a sober procedure: volunteer search parties comb through Moscow’s suburbs and wastelands. The film is family drama and allegory at once, a portrait of a society without love. It premiered in competition at Cannes in 2017, where it received the Jury Prize. In 2017, “Loveless” opened Around the World in 14 Films in Berlin in the Opening Night section.

Shown at the 2017 edition of Around the World in 14 Films.

All films 2017 · Film Archive