Unclenching the Fists (Kira Kovalenko, 2021) (Patreon)

Although I have been somewhat mixed on the films emerging from Alexander Sokurov's production initiative, it's obvious that the old master has an eye for new talent. This is particularly vital, since the Russian film industry remains under the watchful eye of Putin loyalists who prefer gaudy spectacle to the more slippery artistic gestures of Kantemir Balagov or Kovalenko. These films are united by a concern with traumatic history, and the way that broad cultural or political shifts or fissures can impact ordinary lives. In this regard, Sokurov could be said to be promoting a Tolstovian cinema, one that observes no clean separation between individual, class, and national identity.

Unclenching the Fists takes place in Mizur, in the autonomous region of North Ossetia. It's a place with a distinct ethnicity and language, and judging from Kovalenko's film, its citizens harbor some suspicion toward Big Russia, leading to a kind of insularity. Our main focal point is Ada (Milana Aguzarova), a young adult woman living with her younger brother Dakko (Khetag Bibilov) and her overbearing father (Alik Karaev). As depicted by Kovalenko, the family unit is toxic and dysfunctional, but the exact reasons for this remain unclear. We know that Ada's mother is dead; Dakko is uneducated and possibly developmentally delayed; and Ada evinces a simplicity and supplication that suggests that she, also, may not be an intellectually typical adult.

What soon becomes apparent is that Ada's personality has been stunted by an all-pervasive patriarchal authority. Her father forbids her from going anywhere but to work and back. Dakko treats her like a surrogate mother, and at moments appears to harbor incestuous feelings toward her. And when Ada's older brother Akim (Soslan Khugaev) returns from Sevastopol, she clings to him as her means of escape.Meanwhile, Ada is aggressively courted by Tamik (Arsen Khetagurov), a gawky neighborhood boy who refuses to take no for an answer.

But this is fairly typical in Ada's world. Men dominate everything, filial piety is strictly enforced, and a young woman's body belongs to everyone but her. Ada's dad makes her give him massages, Dakko crawls into bed with her despite her protests, and Tamik likes to offer her a ride in his van and refuse to let her out. She is forced to deal with these violations with a feminine-coded passive aggressiveness, eyes down and smiling as she asks to be left alone. As Unclenching the Fists progresses, we come to understand that while Ada may have had deference inculcated into her, she has been more comprehensively victimized. Having been maimed by an unnamed catastrophe (although students of recent Russian history will probably figure it out), Ada has even less control over her body than it seems. And this wound, it seems, is metonymic. She stands in for all the walking wounded of the Putin era, deemed disposable and inconvenient.