Brother was released by Kino Kino! in 1999. Video with English subtitles will be available on the Tartan video label.

BROTHER, a film by Alexei Balabanov, starring Sergei Bodrov, Viktor Sukhorukov. Russia, 1997,95 min., colour

"Terrifically stylish gangster film"  New York Times

"Boldly original"  Time Out New York

"Darkly funny"  Los Angeles Times

Go to transcript of the Night Waves (BBC Radio 3) programme on Balabanov's 'Brother' and 'Happy Days'.

In Russia teenagers no longer dream of becoming cosmonauts. Many of them prefer to join the Mafia.

Danila, Brother's protagonist, is a naive country boy fresh from the army with no money, no job, no profession... One thing, he discovers, he is good at is killing people... Yet he is perceived as a positive hero equally by the disaffected Russian youth and by those more educated and more successful. They like him, according to Ogonyok, "because the way he acts coincides with the way our folklore heroes acted; this is deep-rooted in our consciousness."

Despite Balabanov's reputation as a sophisticated art-house director, Brother has acquired the status of a cult film in Russia.

Popular Russian magazine Ogonyok wrote: "People are not only buying it [on video], but they are talking about it, writing about it and arguing about it".

Sergei Bodrov (Oscar-nominated Prisoner of the Mountains) starring in Brother, points to another group of the film's 'aficionados': "I was approached by a few bandits. They said: 'That's how it is done, the way you showed it. That's how people are killed'." Bodrov recently starred in BBC's Stringer and played alongside Catherine Deneuve in Est-Ouest.

Brother was screened in Un Certain Regard category in Cannes. It has been theatrically released in many countries - amongst them the United States, Italy, Holland, Belgium, and Japan.

 

For further information about Alexei Balabanov and his films, visit the Happy Days page.