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SHULTES

By Bakur BAKURADZE

INTERCINEMA - as SALES All rights, World

Drama - Completed 2008

- Year of production
- 2008
- Genres
- Drama
- Countries
- RUSSIA
- Languages
- RUSSIAN
- Duration
- 100 mn
- Director(s)
- Bakur BAKURADZE
- Writer(s)
- Bakur BAKURADZE
- Cast
- Cecile PLEGE, Gela CHITAVA, Lubov FIRSOVA, Ruslan GREBENKIN, Vadim SUSLOV
- Producer(s)
- Sergey SELIANOV
- Synopsis
- Lesha Shultes is 25 years old. He lives with his old and diseased mother. He cares about her – gets the drugs, fruits and soviet films for her. He doesn’t work.
  Lesha is a pickpocket. He steals everyday. He steals mobile phones, money, wallets, keys from cars for their further transfer to car thieves.
  He is a one-aloner thief (except for the cases when he steals keys form cars, when he fulfills orders from car thieves).
  Nobody from his neighborhood have a hunch that he is a thief. Everybody who has been acquainted with him for a long time think that he is still working as a child’s coacher on run.
  Shultes looks very calm and reserved. But step by step we understand that it is something wrong with him.
  As far as the story goes Shultes begins to forget some things. He constantly forgets addresses, relying only on his pocket-book. One day he forgets the way to his home.
  His manner to answer by gestures hides from people who surround him his developing disease.
  Once he notices a boy who steals the radio/tape recorder from the car. He calmly watches at the guy doing the theft and skipping afterwards. Some days later Shultes meets the guy at the bus stop when he was stealing the wallet from an old woman’s bag. Shultes catches the boy. From that moment Kostya becomes sidekick of Shultes.
  Shultes visits his brother in the army, bringing him some money. Their poor dialogue doesn’t tell anything about their relations. Lesha’s reserved character doesn’t let us read his mind and feelings. It’s his professional character. He looks the same whatever is happening.
  Lesha’s mother dies soon. He buries her quietly, not telling anybody about the fact that she has died.
  After his mother’s death he can’t sit at home. He steals everyday and every hour. Often together with Kostya. And in the evening he comes to his squat where nobody comes besides him. Every day looks the same.
  One day Shultes together with Kostik clean out the beautiful girl in the subway – they take away everything from her bag. In the nearest block of flats they throw away all that they don’t need – passport, the sim-cart, the keys. They take only money and the handy.
  Soon Shultes comes to the hospital (he visits his relative, who is a doctor in intensive care ward) and he sees almost lifeless body of the girl whom they had cleaned out together with Kostya.
  Not believing his memory, Shultes asks Kostya to show him the place where they have thrown the things of that girl. The things are still there – the passport and the keys. Shultes leaves Kostya and goes alone to the address marked in the passport. He opens the door and enters the girl’s flat. He finds her underwear, strange paintings, photos and cameras, then he takes video camera, tapes, a notebook and money from the cabinet and leaves the flat.
  When Lesha comes home he puts on the girl's video. It is a record where she tells her someone that she loves him and sings a very tender love song.
  The next day Shultes gets a call from his relative who is a doctor. He asks him to come to the hospital for a psychiatrist' check. At the doctor's Shultes starts to lie answering the questions and we understand that he has had been injured in a car crash and has a problem with the memory. On his way back he peeks in the intensive care ward once again and sees that the girl had disappeared. He understands that she is dead.
  Shultes comes back home and looks at his family photos, which he has found in his mother’s album. Here he is standing on the victory podium, here he comes the first to finish line. On another picture he is hugging the girl whom he is trying to recall but he can’t.
  Next time Shultes and Kostya steal the car key from a guy in the restaurant, but now Lesha doesn't follow the routine and reveals himself. He lets the boy run away but stays to meet his death.
  The screen is full of household details. This documentary stresses the automatism of the hero, and the automatism of the social reality, which doesn’t let the people step back from their destiny’s rigid logic.
  The activity of Shultes is by itself conflicting. But the stealing is the only thing which connects him with this world. And in this conflict he is trying to find himself.