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| Images courtesy of Provzglyad |
Young yet prolific Yakut writer-director Stepan Burnashev
seems to have shattered the nerves of Russian media regulator Roskomnadzor with
his newest film Aita or АЙТА, a police crime drama spoken of the
same breath as Straw Dogs or even Bad Day at Black Rock when law
and vigilantism find themselves in each other’s crossfire. Considered to be the most successful Yakutia
film yet released theatrically in a burgeoning new wave of distinctly Yakut
cinema, the film appeared on streaming services in March 2023 before being
pulled from platforms in September with the Ministry of Culture of the Russian
Federation citing instances of “nationalism” with “destructive information”
that “contradicts the principles of unity of the peoples of Russia”. Naturally, the banning of what is shaping up
to be an important independent piece of Yakut cinema only furthered interest in
finding out what all the fuss was about.
Turns out the actual film is one of the best detective thrillers of
recent memory with shades of Zodiac and Memories of Murder sprinkled
throughout.
In 2019 Yakutia, the village’s police chief Nikolai
(Innokenty Lukovtsev) is faced with the difficult task of investigating the
death of a young schoolgirl named Aita (Aitalyina Yakovleva) who after a night
of partying in an abandoned house winds up committing suicide. Upon closer inspection, a suicide note turns
up in her pocket reading “I hate you, Afonya”, pointing to Russian police
officer Afonya (Andrey Fomin) as the prime suspect in what appears to be the
rape of an underage girl. After arrest
and incarceration of Afonya, the real battle for Nikolai begins as the girl’s
angry parents including but not limited to her father Ayal (Georgiy Bessonov)
who objects to the police chief’s fair and due process for his new most targeted
inmate and proceeds to take the law into his own hands, resulting in a deadly trading
of bullets and explosives. All the while
this chaos is ensuing, Nikolai fights to get closer to the truth and determine
whether or not Afonya is guilty of a serious criminal offense.
Opening on a grim note in a perpetual nighttime rain taking
place over the Yakutia village as cursive credits appear on the screen amid a
brooding opening ambient cue by Sergey Govorun and Teo Tao, the world of the
film lensed exquisitely by Nasha zima cinematographer Danila Goryunkov
feels entrenched in a somber downpour. Feeling
right at home with the aura of David Fincher’s Se7en with its gloomy
aesthete and inclement neo-noir stylized weather, Aita from beginning to
end is dreary. The lead actor Innokenty Lukovtsev
as village police chief Nikolai who won the Best Actor award at the Winter auteur
film festival gives a committed performance as a man caught between a rock and
a hard place while Andrey Fomin as the main suspect manages to cast doubt and
suspicion on both sides of the story.
Also particularly strong is Georgiy Bessonov as the titular victim’s
grieving father with nothing but sweet revenge on his mind.
Though a critically acclaimed commercial hit signifying
Yakutia cinema as a new wave of filmmaking worldly cinephiles ought to pay
close attention to, the chances of seeing this film remain up in the air in
spite of the director’s distinguished reputation and the strength of the
performances. Seen outside of the controversy
it engendered as an outsider looking in, Aita on its terms proved to be
a solid crime drama that presents a kind of Straw Dogs scenario while
also being something of a social critique of existing relations between Yakutia
villagers and the Russian Federation. While
the film’s future is uncertain, having sought it out myself it is one of the
better new crime dramas you’ve never heard of and an important instance of distinctly
Yakut filmmaking whose vast scope and unique emerging vision sets it apart from
the overall pack of Eastern European cinema.
--Andrew Kotwicki
