Dom

Vasya, Valya and Micha share a makeshift tent near a Moscow station. “I have a flat downtown!”, “I played in football tournaments all over the world before I had my feet problems…”. Reality? Fanstasy? How do you end up in the street, only to put off each week the moment of “going home”, even if you can still go back? Loss of ID papers, army desertion, alcoholism… the reasons for exclusion, alluded to without commentary, paint the underlying picture of a Russian society that is creating outcasts, massively. Following the daily life of the three buddies–two men and a woman–in seemingly rigorous conditions, Home poses the question of belonging to a home… a hearth, like the one that Valya obviously still has, as we learn from a phone call that she has a daughter, husband, mother-in-law. But, already, the house has been recreated. The teapot and the television are soon followed by a plan to put down deeper roots, as if to make the precariousness long-term. Helped by other homeless, the three residents prepare to build a real house, with a shower and guest bedroom. In parallel, a TV commercial is extolling the exoticism of an extremely expensive igloo-hotel…

Charlotte Garson