Ilana is perfectly happy. She feels right at home in the car repair shop whilst the conservative lifestyle expected of the siblings is taken care of by her brother David, who gets engaged at an early age - to a Jew, as the small local community expects of him. Ilana, on the other hand, prefers to secretly meet up with her Muslim boyfriend to drink, make out and smoke weed.
Yet life is merciless in the small town of Nalchik, located in the southern Russian region of Kabardino-Balkaria in the North Caucasus. David and his fiancée are kidnapped, the community cannot raise the ransom money. If the workshop were to be sold and Ilana marry in return for a dowry, it could be enough however. Will the headstrong young woman give up her designs for live for the sake of her family?
In a series of extended scenes and sequence shots rich in colour symbolism, characterised often more by silence than dialogue, Balagov resorts to, at times, graphic imagery in order to portray the pressure exerted on the Jewish minority by an increasingly hostile, violent majority. Balagov's film, set in the late 1990s, is inspired by true events.
Text: Rainer Mende
