Major

The police major Sobolev is on the way to the maternity clinic where his wife is about to give birth to their first child when he runs over a boy on the icy wintery road while speeding. Sobolev must decide whether and to what extent he will use his position to keep his record clean. And he does not (yet) realise that, once he has chosen the path of covering up his deed, there will be no return.

In his second full-length feature film Bykov reiterates a theme that he first unravelled in his short NACHALNIK (THE BOSS), which won the competition of “Kinotavr. Shorts” in 2009: the theme of man’s potential for violence. And, like in his short film, the character here is also a policeman, who acts only to protect his family – in both cases consisting of a wife/mother and a child. What makes Bykov’s films special is his refusal to motivate the sudden turns to violence psychologically; instead, his protagonists act spontaneously, almost without thinking, responding to extreme circumstances or situations.

MAJOR (THE MAJOR) was the only Russian film to screen in an official competition in Cannes this year, in the Directors’ Fortnight. This alone serves in a sense as stamp of quality, alongside the seal of Alexei Uchitel’s production studio Rock films. Bykov himself plays one of the lead roles and has composed the music for the film, displaying to the full his multiple talents.