Tesnota (Closeness)

With his arresting debut, Balagov seems to be on the cusp of greatness, all the more effective for the way he draws upon his personal history to craft unforgettable images.

It is a grim, gruelling two hours that might benefit from some editing but Balagov is clearly a talent to watch and festivals championing new discoveries will want to take note.

It is a grim, gruelling two hours that might benefit from some editing but Balagov is clearly a talent to watch and festivals championing new discoveries will want to take note.

Occasionally, the narrative is almost as wilfully undisciplined as its commendably rebellious heroine.

Closeness, the original title of which, Tesnota, also apparently implies being walled-in or suffocated, is dramatically erratic, with tense and compelling sequences alternating with diffuse and/or flat interludes that don't advance the narrative or pay off in other ways.

Closeness is a tough-minded, rigorously composed, quite brilliantly acted story of the challenges of everyday religious prejudice and ethnic divides in the bleak heart of Russia’s North Caucasus, and in many ways Balagov’s uncompromising but stylized social realism rewards as much as it punishes.

This movie, which Balagov, a Nalchik native, states in an onscreen text is based on a true story, has a whole lot of “slow” and one very nasty burn.