Closeness

Name: Closeness
Director: Kantemir Balagov
Released: 2017

Kantemir Balagov

2017

Synopsis

1998, Nalchik. A Jewish family is in trouble: the youngest son and his bride do not come home, and in the morning, a ransom note arrives. The ransom is so high that the family is forced not only to sell its small business, but also to seek help from its fellow tribesmen.

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Recommendations

83
The Playlist
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.
70
Screen Daily
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.
70
Screen Daily
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.
63
Movie Nation
Ila is the heart and soul of Closeness, and Zhovner breathes an impulsive fury into her.
60
The Irish Times
Occasionally, the narrative is almost as wilfully undisciplined as its commendably rebellious heroine.
50
Variety
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.
50
The Hollywood Reporter
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.
40
The New York Times
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.