Nikolay Eremkin

Spoiled seven-year-old Vanka lives a carefree childhood. Going with his father to the Maslenitsa holiday, Vanka meets a runaway deserter in the forest, about whom he tells the adults. This act instantly deprives Vanka of his childhood, and the father of his child. The event opens his eyes to the adult world in which the child will have to live on.

A son who has left Abkhazia for the Russian North writes a letter to his father who remained in the mountains. His days are marked by the monotonous hum of the factory, cold sunrises, and a yearning for the warmth of home. The letter’s lines are steeped in childhood nostalgia: the smell of an old apartment, a southern forest, cows wandering through it.