Image: Melbourne Queer Film Festival
Stand is not the typical movie that one goes to watch to enjoy a quiet and relaxing Sunday evening. Rather, it keeps the audience in relentless distress: do I leave before something horrible happens, or wait for the almost predictable end? the graphically depicted homophobic degradation of the main character?
From the beginning we know the destiny of the lead character Anton (played by Renat Shuteev). The narrator describes how Anton is obsessed with finding the truth. But what is the truth? This truth is to find, at all costs, a group of homophobic Russian neo-Nazis who killed a gay teenager Nikolay.
Anton and his partner Vlad (Andrey Kurganov) witness the event while passing in their car. Anton wants to intervene but Vlad is afraid and decides to accelerate, driving away as fast as he can. Anton becomes obsessed with finding the killers of the young boy. But Anton is not only battling his guilt for not stepping in to save Nikolay, he’s also fighting for his personal story with a father who rejects him because he is is homosexual. Anton fights against an unfair country where regressive laws have made gay community state-sanctioned targets of abuse.
He eventually convinces his skeptical lover into launching their own amateur investigation into the hate crime. Their risky search for the truth has predictably grim consequences.
This slow-burning film is highly topical, given the intense worldwide outrage over Russia’s 2013 federal law prohibiting homosexual ‘propaganda’. Anton and Vlad make a handsome pair, sharing a loving and natural chemistry in the comfortable privacy of their Moscow apartment.
The French-born director-producer-writer Jonathan Taieb, tackling very big ideas on a small budget, aims to convince us that we are ultimately defined more by our actions than by our ideas.
Winner of numerous awards at Festivals worldwide, Stand is a timely and potent drama that keeps the audience in 87 min of non-stop tension.
Rating: 3 out of 5 starsStand
In Russian with English Subtitles
2014
Director: Jonathan Taieb
Starring: Andrey Kurganov and Renat Shuteev
Producers: Kalin Linsberg and Marcos Rodriguez
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