My Joy by Sergei Loznitza
My Joy is the last project by the Russian documentary director Sergei Loznitza and was presented at the last Cannes Festival. A young truck driver looses his way in the Russian countryside, on his involuntary bifurcations he meets a corrupted policeman, an unfortunate veteran, a minor prostitute, some tramps, and a strange bohemian. The more he tries to find the road towards civilization, the more he discovers that the strength and the instinct of survival has replaced any shape of humanity. In his sinuous road trip, Loznitza gives a creepy and modern variation of The Steppe by Anton Chekhov, where an adolescent discovers early twentieth century Russia. Mixing picaresque literature with enraged reminiscences of Dostoievski, Loznitza transposed it in shaded film where the blackness of the assessment about a contemporary depiction of the Russian landscape contaminates every scenes. Text Pierre-Alexandre Mateos