A boy hits his teacher with a teapot and dreams of running away with the circus. What could go wrong?
In a remote village on the seashore lives a boy nicknamed Shumilka, the village mockingbird and mischief maker. A loyal fan of circus master Leonid Yengibarov considers himself his son. But Yengibarov himself doesn’t dare write a letter and ask for advice on how to join the circus. The morals and spirit of the village, its miserable and half-drunk life make thirteen-year-old Shumilka want to take revenge by all means. And the world takes revenge on him in its own way: everyone gave up on the boy - his mother, his grandmother, and his deaf-mute grandfather. In addition, he is expelled from school because he could not restrain himself and hit the teacher with a teapot. And now the boy is threatened with a colony...
Acting
Alesha Igushkin's raw, unvarnished child performance
Cinematography
Bleak seascapes that mirror a boy's isolation
Direction
Rusakov's unflinching gaze at post-Soviet despair
Director
Sergey Rusakov
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Leonid Yengibarov was a real Soviet-Armenian clown legend; his 1972 death made him a tragic romantic icon for lost Soviet generations.
Rusakov never directed again; this single film captures the specific post-Soviet collapse despair that disappeared from screens once optimism returned.
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