Victor Sluzhkin signs on as a teacher of geography in a secondary school in his native Perm (in the Urals) and gets lost in a haze of hard vodka, desperate love for a nymphet-like student and the stress of educating teenagers. Geographer, as the students immediately dub Sluzhkin, attempts to escape from the grueling, dull, stultifying reality of Russia's provincial life in a rafting tour to the Urals. Accompanied by wild, adventure-seeking adolescents, faced with the numerous grim surprises of the nature, Geographer is poised to find himself and his own truth.
Acting
Khabenskiy's sweaty, magnetic collapse into a man who knows he's ruined.
Cinematography
The Urals as character — beautiful, indifferent, slightly threatening.
Writing
Dialogue that captures teenagers who see right through their broken teacher.
Director
Alexandr Veledinsky
Konstantin Khabenskiy
Viktor Sluzhkin
Elena Lyadova
Nadya
Aleksandr Robak
Budkin
Agrippina Steklova
Roza Borisovna
Andrey Prytkov
Gradusov
Anfisa Chernykh
Masha
Evgeniya Kregzhde
Sashenka
Alla Mezentseva
Evgenia Brik
Kira
Anna Ukolova
Branch
Maksim Lagashkin
Kolesnikov
Ilya Ilinykh
Ovechkin
Vladimir Gudilin
Anna Sinyakina
Sashenka
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Perm was known as Russia's 'closed city' during Soviet times; the film captures post-Soviet provincial stagnation where geography degrees lead nowhere.
Khabenskiy, one of Russia's biggest stars, took a massive pay cut for this indie production because he believed in the script's honesty about masculine failure.
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