Section: It's all go in the East

L’Amiral Tchoumakov

The Admiral Tchumakov

Laurier Fourniau, Arnaud Alberola
Belgium, France, 2021, 64 Min

Admiral Tchumakov remains a figure of authority. The former commander of a naval port on Lake Issyk Kul, the world's second largest mountain lake in what is now Kyrgyzstan, has aged gracefully. Soon a modern tourist resort is to replace the port facilities; until then however the admiral will continue to swim in the sea alongside those eager to leave these memories behind them.

This portrait of Tchumakov is nostalgic in the best sense of the word: Always dressed in uniform, with an admiral's hat atop his head, his attire comes across strange in a country hoping to reinvent itself. When he and his fellow former servicemen look back into the past, they tend to see things through rose-tinted glasses. Just like the history of the country he grew up in, the admiral is akin to something from another world; second-hand goods now discarded on the scrapheap of modern society. When Tchumakov talks about the past, the grandchildren hang on his every word. His pride however comes across without a strong sense of nostalgia for the Communist past. Instead viewers are confronted with an individual whose inner compass still works, even though his homeland now goes under a different name.

Filmformat
1:1.85
Ton
Andere
Schnitt
Laurier Fourniau
Produzent
Christian Lelong
Produktion
Cinedoc Films
Co-Produktion
Kinomaï Films
Kontakt
Taskovski FIlms
Naida Sahinagic, Marcella Jelic
ubmissions@taskovskifilms.com

Laurier Fourniau, Arnaud Alberola -