Feliks Gerchikov: The Children of USSR (Yeldey SSSR, 2007) reviewed by Åsne Ø. Høgetveit © 2022 |
This is Feliks Gerchikov’s directorial debut depicting unprivileged immigrant youth from the former USSR now living in Israel. The film won the Best Israeli Film award at the 2007 Eilat International Film Festival, and entered into the 29th Moscow International Film Festival. Still, there is little written about the film, and on the film’s page on the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) only 19 people have rated it. Since his debut, Feliks Gerchikov has directed TV series of various genres for Russian television, according to his profile pages on IMDb and Kinopoisk.
The film’s plot is a conventional tale of underprivileged youth living on the margins of society, and how an idealistic adult takes it upon himself to try and guide the youth back on a sustainable track. However, that is no easy task when the young men are already struggling with substance abuse, crime, and family matters. The unconventional aspect is that the youth in question are the marginalised (mostly Russian-speaking) Jewish immigrants in Israel.
The film centres around Slava (Daniel Bruck), a young ex-Soviet immigrant to Israel. We first meet him in a police interrogation room, where he refuses to cooperate with the police officer (Salim Dau). Slava neglects his young wife, Sveta (Tamara Klingon), and toddler son, Nikita, getting drunk with his mates all night, rather than buying diapers and returning home before bedtime. Slava’s wife and in-laws scold him for not being able to get and hold a decent job, to which Slava replies that as a Soviet immigrant (just like his in-laws are) the Israeli system is against him. He refuses to “kiss the Moroccan ass”, referring to Israeli immigrants from Africa, on whom Slava’s well-being occasionally depends. Slava dreams of returning to Russia, like his parents have already done, but cannot afford it.
After being thrown out of his flat by his wife, Slava ends up crashing at the middle-aged shopkeeper Viktor’s home. Viktor (Vladimir Friedman) is another Soviet (Ukrainian) immigrant. The shopkeeper sees an opportunity for Slava to make some money, and perhaps to change his life trajectory for the better: there is an amateur football tournament coming up, with a money prize of $ 10 000. Viktor convinces Slava (who happens to play football well) to organise a team, and then Viktor would coach them. After all, Viktor used to be a professional footballer.
Slava’s team is indeed a motley crew of Soviet immigrants. In addition, Viktor recruits an Ethiopian immigrant (presumably serving as an example of yet another typical Israeli outsider hoping to get somewhere owing to his footballing skills). Slava names the team simply SSSR (or the USSR in Russian) – not without complaints from the tournament organiser. However, this time the police officer has Slava’s back. Despite several hindrances and obstacles, the SSSR team manages to show up at and participate in the tournament. The film shifts over to an epilogue as the football match is kicked off.
Throughout the film, Slava is clinging desperately to his past and his Russian heritage. By letting the SSSR team lose the finals in the tournament; Slava’s futile plea for his parents to pay for a ticket back to Russia; and happy afterlife in Israel as shown in the epilogue, the film is suggesting that Slava had to get over his idea of Russia and his Soviet identity to thrive in Israel.
Besides Slava’s story, the film delves into the lives of two other Russian-speaking players on team SSSR. The first subplot is formed by a Romeo and Juliet-themed story of a petty criminal called Mukha (Igal Reznik), and Oksana, Viktor’s daughter (Anna Stephan). Mukha is coerced into participating in his brother’s criminal gang, serving time in jail for the crimes that his brother has planned and/or carried out. Despite the disapproval of Oksana’s father and Mukha’s brother, and these relatives’ efforts to end their relationship, Oksana continues to see Mukha. The other subplot revolves around the tragic fate of Banych, Slava’s closest friend (Artur Marchenko). Throughout the film Banych gets deeper and deeper into drug abuse and trade. The film climaxes when he ends up shooting himself in front of Slava, making it all too clear to Slava that he has got to turn his life around.
In the film’s documentary-style epilogue, we learn that Oksana visits Mukha weekly in prison and they will soon get married; and Slava is reunited with his wife Sveta and their son – strolling down an Israeli avenue like a happy family. The epilogue mirrors the film’s opening credits featuring what presumably is a documentary footage of USSR migrants to Israel. However, the actual documentary footage is telling us an ambiguous story about families in search of a better life. The fictional epilogue provides somewhat of a fairy-tale ending to what has up until then been a social drama. Thus, I am left to wonder whether this is indeed what happened – that as soon as Slava grew out of his adolescent fantasy of Russia and the USSR, all his other problems would disappear as if by magic. Or if the epilogue is just a figment of Slava’s imagination, his dream for the future. The song played at the end of the epilogue, in transition to the end credits, furthers my suspicion, as it is translated into English as “Here imagination ends, the sadness is finished”. After all the trouble the characters went through, with a system that seems to be working against them, it is hard to believe that losing a football tournament and a good friend in a tragic death would turn out to be Slava’s key to happiness. The epilogue suggests that the individual must adapt to the system even if the system is cruel and discriminatory. Thus, the critique of the Israeli society presented in the film is reality-based and deeply questionable at the same time.
Another aspect that makes the film uncomfortable to watch is the stories of the two women, Sveta and Oksana. The epilogue shows that both get back with their less-than-ideal partners. The women seem perhaps even more trapped that the men, as their fates mainly depend on their struggle for agency in their own lives. They are both ensnared in a negotiation between their fathers and their husbands/lovers. They are not presented with having the option to live independently, without a man governing their lives. Their function is primarily to guide the young men in their lives towards stable, albeit subordinate lives in a society that continues to treat them as secondary citizens.
The film provides an interesting view into the situation of underprivileged immigrants in Israel. The Israeli society is presented as conflicted and divided. Although the ongoing conflict with most of the Arab world is not at the centre of the film, it looms in the background from the very first scene, as an air alarm goes off while Slava is at the police office. The police officer reminds Slava that Israeli authorities are protecting him as they speak. This statement foregrounds Slava’s struggle to reconcile with the fact that the USSR/Russia, personified by his parents, no longer protects him. The Children of USSR can be read both as a social critique of Israeli society and a coming-of-age tale where the protagonist is forced to liberate himself from his nostalgia and lost childhood.
Åsne Ø. Høgetveit, UiT The Arctic University of Norway
The Children of USSR, Israel, 2007
Color, 96 minutes
Director: Feliks Gerchikov
Screenplay: Feliks Gerchikov and Ayidin Ali-Zade
Cinematography: Amnon Zlayet
Music: Arkadi Duchin
Producers: Ayelet Imberman, Hillel Roseman, Mirit Toovi
Cast: Daniel Bruck, Salim Daw, Tamara Klingon, Vladimir Friedman, Igal Reznik, Anna Stephan, Artur Marchenko
Feliks Gerchikov: The Children of USSR (Yeldey SSSR, 2007) reviewed by Åsne Ø. Høgetveit © 2022 |