Alexandra - 32nd HKIFF

It was one of the more accessible films by Russian film maker Aleksandr Sokurov, a simple story about a grandmother, Alexandra, visiting an army camp near the Chechnya to visit her grandson, whom she had not seen for years. Under the eye of the grandmother, the war seems to become nothing but a draining experience for young man to be grown up yet still with the desire to be young, to be playful, and not least, to be taken care of by their mother once again. It likes a study of the countless closeup shot of different soldiers "working" in the camp, to see their youthfulness yet at the same time their confusion about why and what they are there for. There is no one single bullets fired, no one got kill or injured, and certainly no violent took place during the film. The grandmother character, played strongly by Galina Vishnevskaya, have this charisma, if not a sense of authority/motherly feel which every solider in the camp seems to search for. Her stubbornness makes her a character which both admired and respected around the soldiers in different ranks. There are constant (but short) flash back, between Alexandra, and the soldiers or persons she meets, as if she still remember every one of them after they crossing each other's path.

Shoot in very washed-up colour to take out any vibrant-ness of the images, the film (slowly but surely) gives a heavy feeling about how one mother (symbolised by Alexandra) looked at their sons grown up, whether they are willingly or not, in times of this long battle. Whereas from the soldiers' point of view, looking back as if the war is not there, whom he might end up be.