Search Film, Company, People...

THE HUNTER

OKHOTNIK

By Bakur BAKURADZE

VITA AKTIVA - as PROD

Drama - Completed 2011

What shapes a man more: the natural world around him, or the people who come into his life? The hunter Ivan Dunaev lives on a farm with his family and his right hand man Viktor; he meets a woman from a prison colony with whom he wants to have a relationship, but then he loses her.

- Year of production
- 2011
- Genres
- Drama
- Countries
- RUSSIA
- Languages
- RUSSIAN
- Budget
- 1 - 3 M$
- Duration
- 100 mn
- Director(s)
- Bakur BAKURADZE
- Writer(s)
- Bakur BAKURADZE
- Producer(s)
- Sergey SELYANOV (СTB Film Company), Julia MISHKINENE (Salvador D)
- Synopsis
- Ivan Dunaev stands in a forest and listens. It is dawn. The dogs are chasing an animal towards him; he shoulders his rifle. After killing a hare in the morning, the hero goes to work. He will do his books, butcher a few hogs, clean the hog shed with his partner, fix the tractor and so forth until nightfall. In the evening, there is his clean house—his wife, daughter, and son. He sits in front of the tv holding an ashtray. His answer to the extinction and alcoholism of the Russian countryside is backbreaking work and a large loss-making farm, which stays afloat thanks to his industriousness and passion. Aside from his family, the only person who is really close to him is Viktor. Viktor brings two poorly dressed women to the farm and signs them up to work. They are convicts who are serving their sentences in a prison colony. They are so-called involuntaries—that is, people who committed crimes involuntarily. Lyuba and Raya.
  Ivan Dunaev supplies this colony with meat. The women work in the hog shed. It is as if Ivan doesn’t notice the women working on his farm. But once he sees Lyuba waiting at a bus stop and gives her a lift. They travel for a long while in silence. Lyuba realizes that she shouldn’t have got into the car, but this is all that she has been dreaming of lately. This woman needs intimacy. This is the only way she can go on living. Ivan drives the car into a field and embraces Lyuba. She tries to resist her feelings. Finally, she yields up to Ivan, embracing him and weeping.
  Planting time. Dunaev and Lyuba’s wordless affair continues. But their encounters are always painful. She always embraces him firmly, as if he were a world that she cannot let go. Dunaev leaves with his family to a resort where his son will get treatment.
  After Dunaev’s departure, we see for the first time the linen factory where Lyuba works after she quits her job at the farm. Lyuba is released from prison. She travels on a train. She is alone. The Dunaev family returns. Dunaev doesn’t go to the town in search of Lyuba. He senses that she has left. Dunaev is hunting alone. We see him at night next to a campfire. In the morning, he takes a shot from his rifle.
- Partners & financing
- CTB Film Company, Russia
  Salvador D Production Service Company, Russia
- Production schedule
- Pre-production : June – July 2010
  Shooting: 3 weeks in September - October 2010 and 3 weeks in January 2011
  Post-production: April - May 2011
- Beginning of shooting
- Sep 01, 2010