CHUPACABRA

Nine-year-old Andrey lives like an outcast drifter on the stormy coast of the White Sea. He's not an orphan, but he may as well be. His alcoholic father rejects him and his impoverished mother can see no other alternative than to send him to a boarding home. Reason enough for Andrey to escape into a fantasy world of his own. The boy befriends a stray wolfhound, pretending the canine is a monster, the legendary chupacabra, and keeps himself afloat by selling diverse flotsam. However, when the wolf-like creature dies, Andrey is left to fend for himself again, left to scale the towering threshold to adulthood all alone. In his debut film, Grigory Kolomytsev paints a vivid portrait of the emotional challenges inherent in growing up, with this fantastic tale of a near-feral boy. Buffeted by an impressive soundscape of crashing waves and coastal wind, one can almost taste the salty sea air. Through this and other touches, the viewer is moved to empathise even more profoundly with the emotional and physical scars of an unfulfilled childhood spent in poverty and hopelessness borne by Kolomytsev's protagonist Andrey.