Chukotka, where Indigenous teenager Lyoshka lives a hardscrabble life in a remote whaling village, is the easternmost part of Russia. Beautiful in a forbidding, raw-boned way, with about half its territory above the Arctic Circle, it is separated from the westernmost Alaskan reaches of America by just 86 kilometers. But the cultural distance is immeasurably more vast, and only increased when Lyoshka’s village gets the internet, and, in an amusing tableau worthy of Aki Kaurismäki, burly men in weathered oilskins cluster round a glitchy screen on which blond camgirls pout in pink bedrooms for pay-per-minute customers.
The clash between the bleak traditional lifestyle of the villagers, who still use hand-tossed harpoons to secure their catch, reddening the sea, and the futurist fantasy of a Detroit-based online sex work enterprise is explored in uneven yet stirring ways in Philipp Yuryev’s feature debut, “The Whaler Boy.” , which perhaps convince most when they do not cohere.
The clash between the bleak traditional lifestyle of the villagers, who still use hand-tossed harpoons to secure their catch, reddening the sea, and the futurist fantasy of a Detroit-based online sex work enterprise is explored in uneven yet stirring ways in Philipp Yuryev’s feature debut, “The Whaler Boy.” , which perhaps convince most when they do not cohere.
- 1/15/2022
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
"Take me home." Film Movement has unveiled the official US trailer for an indie coming-of-age film from Russia titled The Whaler Boy, marking the feature directorial debut of filmmaker Philipp Yuryev. This first premiered in the Venice Days sidebar at the 2020 Venice Film Festival, and won the Director's Award there. It also played at numerous other festivals around the world through the last year. The film follows a young hunter, living in a male-dominated whaling community, who sets off an a journey to find a webcam girl he saw on his computer after the internet arrives in their town. Featuring stunning photography of the dramatic landscape, and punctuated by some off-kilter humor, "there’s an almost fable-like simplicity to this atmospheric coming of age story" about the division between two worlds. The small cast includes Vladimir Onokhov, Kristina Asmus, and Arieh Worthalter. This looks quite compelling, I need to check it out.
- 12/20/2021
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
Philipp Yuryev’s “The Whaler Boy,” which took home the Venice Days award at last year’s Venice Film Festival, won the top prize at the Transilvania Film Festival on Saturday.
The jury praised the Russian director’s feature debut, an offbeat story of a teenage whale hunter on the Bering Strait who sets out to meet a webcam model, for being “beautiful and meticulous in its sense of time and place” while also being “really resonant and contemporary at the same time as being classic.”
Yuryev, who had not attended the festival, was hastily flown to Cluj from Moscow on Saturday morning, telling the audience: “It is really something surprising to be here, and to have a chance to visit this place and to see you all.” He dedicated the award to the remote whale-hunting community in Chukotka where the movie was filmed, as well as to its young...
The jury praised the Russian director’s feature debut, an offbeat story of a teenage whale hunter on the Bering Strait who sets out to meet a webcam model, for being “beautiful and meticulous in its sense of time and place” while also being “really resonant and contemporary at the same time as being classic.”
Yuryev, who had not attended the festival, was hastily flown to Cluj from Moscow on Saturday morning, telling the audience: “It is really something surprising to be here, and to have a chance to visit this place and to see you all.” He dedicated the award to the remote whale-hunting community in Chukotka where the movie was filmed, as well as to its young...
- 8/1/2021
- by Christopher Vourlias
- Variety Film + TV
Film Movement president Michael Rosenberg, Loco Films head of sales Arnaud Godard announce acquisitions.
Film Movement has acquired US rights to Philipp Yuryev’s Venice Giornate degli Autori Director’s Award winner The Whaler Boy and Ivan Ostrochovsky’s Berlinale selection Servants (exclusive).
Both films are in the pipeline for 2021 theatrical releases followed by roll-out on home entertainment and digital platforms.
The Whaler Boy stars Vladimir Onokhov as Leshka, a 15-year-old whale hunter in the north eastern region of Russia who contemplates a perilous voyage across the on the Bering Strait to meet a girl he encounters on a webcam site.
Film Movement has acquired US rights to Philipp Yuryev’s Venice Giornate degli Autori Director’s Award winner The Whaler Boy and Ivan Ostrochovsky’s Berlinale selection Servants (exclusive).
Both films are in the pipeline for 2021 theatrical releases followed by roll-out on home entertainment and digital platforms.
The Whaler Boy stars Vladimir Onokhov as Leshka, a 15-year-old whale hunter in the north eastern region of Russia who contemplates a perilous voyage across the on the Bering Strait to meet a girl he encounters on a webcam site.
- 1/19/2021
- by Jeremy Kay
- ScreenDaily
The distance between the most easterly point of Russia and Alaska in the US is simultaneously about 53 miles and an entire world away so far as teenager Leshka (Vladimir Onokhov) is concerned. A window between Leshka's Chukchi island community, where he lives with grandfather (Nikolai Tatato), is opened by an erotic website, where girls gyrate for the camera - a clever piece of opening camerawork and editing which travels from the back street set-up in America via a computer screen to Leshka's village helping us to feel both the yawning gap and the connection between the two.
The poor internet connection may mean "Hollysweet999" is a pixelated dream girl, but that doesn't stop the 15-year-old from falling for her charms. Debut director Philipp Yuryev treads a careful tragicomic line as Leshka becomes increasingly obsessed with this candy-lipsticked girl who offers the promise of something completely different from the whaling life.
The poor internet connection may mean "Hollysweet999" is a pixelated dream girl, but that doesn't stop the 15-year-old from falling for her charms. Debut director Philipp Yuryev treads a careful tragicomic line as Leshka becomes increasingly obsessed with this candy-lipsticked girl who offers the promise of something completely different from the whaling life.
- 1/3/2021
- by Amber Wilkinson
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
To skin a quote from The Social Network, it’s probably better to be accused of necrophilia these days than to be accused of whaling. Less so in the world of The Whaler Boy—a new Russian film tantalizingly set in that vast nation’s furthest reaches—wherein a young lad contends with the hormones and boredoms of rural life while casting longing looks to the West. The subject of his longings is an American Camgirl with the handle HollySweet999. Oh, to be young and feel love’s keen sting.
The Whaler Boy is the first feature of Philipp Yuryev, a 30-year-old filmmaker from Moscow, which lies some 4000 miles West of this film’s alien landscape. The location is a real doozy, especially for anyone who, in some quiet moment, glanced to that spot on the dateline where Alaska and Russia almost touch and wondered how many souls had attempted the hop over.
The Whaler Boy is the first feature of Philipp Yuryev, a 30-year-old filmmaker from Moscow, which lies some 4000 miles West of this film’s alien landscape. The location is a real doozy, especially for anyone who, in some quiet moment, glanced to that spot on the dateline where Alaska and Russia almost touch and wondered how many souls had attempted the hop over.
- 11/12/2020
- by Rory O'Connor
- The Film Stage
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