The Portrayal of Fatherhood in Recent Russian Cinema

With the exception of a brief mention in an article by Julian Graffy in Sight and Sound, barely any scholarship has dealt with a trio of films that emerged in 2003, each of which dealt with the theme of fatherhood in contemporary (post-Soviet) Russia. The Return (Andrei Zvyagintsev, 2003), Roads to Koktebel (Boris Khlebnikov/Aleksei Popogrebsky, 2003) and Father and Son (Aleksandr Sokurov, 2003) all deal with fatherhood in slightly different ways, suggesting a variety of responses by the older, ‘fatherly’ generation from Soviet Russia towards its younger, post-Soviet progeny, and vice versa. This paper will look at all three films and investigate how they (among others) seemingly pursue what Fredric Jameson might term an ‘allegorical’ narrative not only about family relationships in post-Soviet Russia, but also about Russia itself, as the first generation of post-Soviet children grows up and is inducted into a male world still shaped by the older, Soviet generation. In this way, the paper will also demonstrate how the films reflect the politics of their makers and, by looking at the success or otherwise of each film, how the various attitudes presented in the films towards fatherhood potentially reflect the zeitgeist of post-Soviet Russia.