Genre: Comedy/Drama
Duration: 97 mins
Format: 35mm
Director: Nikolay Dostal
Cast: Egor Pavlov, Alexander Korshunov, Roman Madyanov, Svetlana Timofeyeva-Letunovskaya, Yevgenii Redko, Svetlana Ulybina
Awards: Golden St George for Best Film (Moscow International Film Festival 2009)

Peter, who is a little slow, lives in the prison camp town of Kandalaksha, and works conscientiously, believing he is the town's traffic officer. It is March 1953, and the inhabitants of this frozen backwater encourage Peter's role as the town fool with great enthusiasm. This is not to say they are mean, indeed he is treated with great affection. Through Peter we meet the town's locals: the Doctors who have affairs in broom cupboards, the anti-Semitic Colonel Bogoslavskii and the local hero, engineer Konovalov. They all seem to be living lives just as restricted as the convicts whose camp is only a stone's throw away.

Director Nikolay Dostal shows us a snapshot of life in Soviet Russia just before the death of Stalin, which contains elements of comedy, satire and deep social insight. This is a delicate Russian gem.

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