I WANTED TO SEE ANGELS


Title   Cast   Director   Year Shown  Other Info    Country  Notes 


Ja Hatiella Ooveedit Angelow

Russia / USA, 1992, 83 min

Shown in 1993

CREDITS

dir
Sergei Bodrov
prod
Carolyn Cavallero
scr
Sergei Bodrov, Carolyn Cavallero
cam
Alexei Rodionov, Sergei Taraskin
editor
Olga Grinspun
cast
Alexei Baranov, Natasha Ginko, Lea Akeojakova

OTHER

source
Screen Angel Production

COMMENTS

Sergei Bodrov in person.

A few of the older actors in the stunning new film by Sergei Bodrov (Freedom Is Paradise, SFIFF 1990) are professionals, but most of his young cast are kids that he and his partner—producer Carolyn Cavallero—met on the streets of Moscow, playing roles that are not too far from their real lives. The film is a noirish thriller peopled with smalltime gangsters, bike gangs, rock bands and teenage runaways. Moscow here is less a palace of dreams or nightmares than a city of broken promises and faltering resolve. Does any other movie get closer to the way things are for Russian kids in 1993? Bob, a 20-year-old wrestling champ turned amateur hit man, rides the 1000-odd kilometers from Saratov to Moscow on his vintage motorcycle; his job is to collect a bad debt for his boss or to kill the debtor. In his mind are images from an American movie called Easy Rider: "They got killed in the end, but they shined!" What awaits him in the big city is fugitive sex, untrustworthy friends, punk thrashes from the Mongol Shoodan Group and a growing feeling that something is eluding him. I Wanted to See Angels would have you believe that it's a genre movie, but it's actually not. This is a sensuous, almost Baudelairean glide through a world that is more real than it imagines. The first film for 20-year-olds who know they've already missed out on life.

—Tony Rayns, Berlinale Journal

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