17/03/2021 - This charming first feature plunges the viewer into a “White Russian” holiday camp in the depths of the French Landes, speaking to the experience of exile and its ties with the past and the present

"Dark is the night. Only bullets are whistling in the steppe. Only the wind is wailing through the telephone wires, stars are faintly flickering. Dark is the night, but I know, my love, that you are not sleeping. And, near a child’s crib, you secretly wipe away a tear". It is this moving song - performed for the first time in 1943 by Marc Bernes in Leonid Loukov’s Soviet film Two Soldiers - that is sung one evening by Nikita Makarova, one of the protagonists in Laetitia Farkas’ first documentary feature film Longing For An Island [+see also:
trailer
film profile], which proved a happy discovery in the 43rd Cinéma du Réel Festival’s French competition. The action unfolds in July 2018, in the French department of Landes - more specifically, in Hossegor – but a wholly Russian mindset appears to have taken over the region (and the film): "This vodka is amazing, it’s so easy to drink. This is the life! When you have a vodka with someone, you immediately understand what frame of mind they’re in".

Established in the southwest of France over a half-century ago, amidst woodland peppered with pine and silver birch trees, Sokol’s holiday camp does far more than inspire vague reminiscences in Russian families exiled long-term in France. It promises chalets resembling Russian log huts, TVs tuned into Russia-24 news, menus offering plov, buckwheat kasha, herring, borscht with chicken blintzes, and apple pirojkis for dessert, not to mention zakouskis in the evening when rounds of vodka loosen tongues and hips while violins and balalaikas play into the night… And found not too far from here are beaches, the swelling sea, the towering waves of the Atlantic and opportunities to surf. It’s a small, summertime archipelago soothed by cicada song, where a bell rings to announce mealtimes and where children frolic, enjoying the greatest of freedom under the eye of their parents and grandparents.

An observation post from which to study a small and ever-changing community (as is the case with all such holiday camps) which has stayed true to its cultural roots, Longing For An Island homes in one particular family: from the old grandfather whose health is on the slide to his other half Galina, from half-brothers Nikita and Maxime to the very young Tibor (who tirelessly gallivants around the camp and its surrounds), it is these three generations of a line of "White Russians" (their elders having opted for exile following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917) which act as a connecting thread in this emotional and intuitive cinematic immersion straddling the past and the present. And when Nikita has to leave for a surfing competition in Kaliningrad, a sense of concern, rooted in history, takes hold of the clan…

Alternating highly intimist family scenes shot in a very “raw” style, with beautifully sweeping interludes and atmospheric moments (slow motion scenes, sensory aestheticism), all set to the tune of the crashing roar of the waves, Laetitia Farkas not only succeeds in sketching out some highly engaging portraits, she also conveys the nigh-on inexpressible state of mind whereby a deep love for one’s country co-exists alongside an underlying melancholy which is so characteristic of exile and which floats to the surface over time. It’s a complex feeling which the director never looks to explain (except via some rare archive images) and which lends Longing For An Island the slightly disjoined character to which it owes its charm, enveloped by a wonderful score composed by Nihil Bordures.

Longing For An Island is produced by Juliette Cazanave on behalf of Kepler22 Productions.

(Translated from French)