Twenty-three-year-old Vitaly Akimov portrays his family in the shrinking Russian provincial town of Arsenyev. Ten-year-old Stepan, his brother’s stepson, acts as a guide to this grim environment, appropriately filmed in black and white. He strums his guitar, fetches water, or plays kindly with his little half-brother. He also witnesses another side of life. Slightly embarrassed, he gingerly walks around his stepfather sleeping off the drink, soaked his own urine on the kitchen floor. Stepan talks cheerfully about the horrific events of his life, or shares his deeper thoughts.

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