1990, 92 min., colour
Center for Creative Initiatives LO SFK,
Cinema Club Mirror (Syktyvkar), Film studio Troitsky Most (Lenfilm)

scenario: Yu.Arabov
camera: A.Burov
art director: V.Soloviev
sound: V.Persov
editor: R.Lisova

cast P.Alexandrov, N.Rodnova

“One day every son has to perform a sad duty — to bury his father. This is the main and only event that occurs in The Second Circle and it is depicted with epic simplicity and in every detail. It makes visible all the broken connections of our life, the senseless inertia of rituals that are now disjointed but in old days had sacral content and meaning… Dead father, dead city, dead times, and one can hardly tell day from night and life from non-existence. Disappearance without trace, an insignificant heritage — a handful of false relics summing up the whole life… That is it, the tragic consequence of the historical delusions of our society — the society that dared to put the time out of joint and to place the social dogma above everything.”

Alexander Sokurov (from the author's annotation)

The sandy southern panoramas of Days of Eclipse were infernal and deserted. The lifeless northern landscapes and dead interiors of The Second Circle are even more deserted and infernal. It is a different climatic zone of the country, once united by a common trouble. And the hero is the same young stranger, the same newcomer with the same name — Malyanov. However, in the interpretation of the other performer — a student from Leningrad Pyotr Alexandrov — he is no longer a robust youth but a person bearing in himself a pale light of life and duty — the duty to bury his dead father and to deal with his poor heritage. Debris of depreciated souvenirs in the hands of a destitute heir — this is Sokurov's bitter and sharp metaphor of Motherland. And there is one more metaphor here — an overcrowded bus where a silent, faceless act of violence is committed.

Alexandra Tuchinskaya

Prizes and awards:

FIPRESSI award, award “For the Development of Avant-garde Trend in Cinema Art” (award of cinema press of the Netherlands at the International Film Festival in Rotterdam (1990).
Grigory Kozintsev Award (LENFILM studio) for Best Directing (1990).

English translation by Anna Shoulgat, © 2002.