Oy vy, gousi
Russia,
1991, 88 min
Shown in 1992
CREDITS
OTHER
COMMENTS
Lydia Bobrova in person.Lydia Bobrova's directorial debut is one of great emotional depth, sensitivity and unexpected deadpan humor. It tells of three brothers in an impoverished village: Mitka, an invalid unable to work because of his health; and his wife Raya, an overworked seamstress with a bad heart; his brother Petka, a scrawny runt married to the monumental Dasha, a nurse in an old age home. Sanya, the third brother, returns after eleven years in prison—whether for murder or for a political offense is not clear. The action takes place during the 1980 Moscow Olympics, an event whose kitschy splendor reaches the villagers through newsreel and television, overlaid by patriotic hymns to the great Soviet Motherland, all of which only serve to underline the hopeless dullness of their own lives. For ten years, censorship made production of Hey, You Wild Geese impossible. When political conditions changed, Bobrova could not bring herself to entrust her script to some other director so she entered film school and studied direction—with Alexei Gherman, among others—so she could make the film herself. The film speaks not only of Bobrova's own experiences and those of her family but of countless others who live in Russia's remote provinces. It may be seen as an allegorical fable about that vast country and its recent history.