彼得在去天堂的路上 Петя по дороге в Царствие Небесное

Named best film at the 2009 Moscow International Film Festival, [Pete on the Way to Heaven] pivots on a young, somewhat mentally impaired man who lives his life pretending to be a local traffic cop. Everyone in town humors him in his harmless pursuit, until things take a turn for the serious when a convict escapes from a nearby prison and Petya to help with the manhunt. But Petya’s amiable enthusiasm brings about tragedy. Based on the story by Mikhail Kuraev, the narrative unfolds in Soviet Russia at the end of the Stalin regime in 1953, and is part of an increasing trend among artists from the former Soviet Union to revisit the history in order to understand it. Petya is positioned as the village savior-fool that everyone projects on and reacts to – similar to Peter Sellers’ Chance in [Being There] or Tom Hanks in [Forrest Gump], a character that tells us about the world he lives in through his passivity. This is a beautiful recreation of an era the country – or countries – is still reflecting on.