Bread Day
Director: Sergei Dvortsevoi
Running Time: 30 mins
Russia 1998

Post Screening Discussion with Director

Eight kilometres from St. Petersburg lies the near abandoned workers’s settlement where only a handful of elderly people remain, living at the extremes of human existence. Food is delivered to the village once a week.

The elderly inhabitants can buy bread only once week, at a fixed time. When a railway car is disconnected from a passing rail line, the villagers must push the boxcar by hand wading through waist height snow. Camera and sound are the basic tools of this master filmmaker – no on-line visual effects, no commentary, no orchestral score, no interviews or extraneous materials.

The quiet rhythm of the film allows the viewer time to move through these visual events in a multi-layered way that, due to the clarity of the structure and editing, unfold their meaning with profound poignancy and wonder.

Sergei Dvortsevoi was born in Kazakhstan and studied film directing and scriptwriting in Moscow in 1993. Since then he has worked as freelance director based in Moscow.

Filmography: Happiness (1994) Chastie (Paradise) (1995)’ Bread Day (1998); Highway (1999). His films are characterised by their dramatic yet minimalist approach to life, with its long takes and tableau-like sequences. He has said of his films, ‘I have tried to catch life as it unfolds in its very simple, sparkling beauty. For me it is the task of a film director to let life come out before the camera without trying to decorate it. Everywhere in the world, whatever the social conditions, life has these unique moments’.


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