1986

Young Belarusian student Lena is unable to get a grip on life. Her boyfriend Viktor is becoming more and more of a mystery. Lena is unable to decide whether their beautiful yet fragile love is doing her any good at all, and to top it all off, her father is in prison. To raise the bail money, Lena decides to continue her father’s illegal business. In order to meet dubious dealers, she often drives her father’s old truck across the border and into the Chernobyl exclusion zone and is stricken by this deserted area, featuring empty forests and abandoned villages. Increasingly, Lena finds herself crossing ever-more boundaries, geographical as well as imaginary ones. Director Lothar Herzog highlights, analogous to his protagonist in a fragmentary, sketchy manner, the stunning beauty and the mysteries of the border area between Belarus and the Ukraine. (Zurich Film Festival)