LOVE

What might initially seem to be just another “boys' initiation movie” is in fact a perceptive meditation on the trials of young love in a rapidly transforming Russia. Two teenage boys, the experienced Vadim and the virgin Sasha, go to a party hoping to meet the girls of their dreams. Vadim meets Marina, and over time a sensual relationship flourishes. Sasha, meanwhile, falls in love with Masha, a young Jewish girl whose family is about to emigrate to israel. When Sasha learns that Masha's family is being harassed daily by threatening phone calls from anti Semites, he undertakes to find the voice, the invisible force that is compelling his first love to leave. This portrait of young people confronting more than sex won the Moscow Critics' Award for best picture and is undoubtedly a fine example of the new wave of Russian cinema. In Russian with English subtitles.