WHEN IT BLINDS, OPEN YOUR EYES

Schanna and Ljoscha have been addicted to heroin since the 1990’s, Russia’s years of turbulent transition, and are HIV positive to boot. Now, in their mid-30’s, they live together with Ljoscha’s mother Maria in an apartment high-rise in Saint Petersburg. They know that their time is slowly running out and confront this fact with their fragile lust for life and gallows humour. In her documentary chamber drama, Ivette Löcker paints an intimate and warm-hearted portrait of the lost “Perestroika Generation”, while managing to permit a glimpse of the possibility of change in the midst of the urban Russian dreariness.