Intrigue

A teenage girl, who has just finished school feels trapped and aimless in her ordinary Russian family, supported by an alcoholic father, in a dull industrial town.

A story about a young woman, Vera, who is somebody, living the life of a troubled teenager in the time right before the end of the Soviet Union. She lives in a very small Russian apartment with her mother and father, however being this close to each other makes the living get rough. Their daily life is plagued with massive amounts of alcohol (mainly vodka) and when she tries to escape her home life, she meets up with a boyfriend, Sergei who then moves into her already small apartment after sleeping with her. Every day little Vera has to go through hell just to get by, which even involves her going against her own morals after her father has done something extremely wrong.—Rosa Thompson

A story about the complexities of family life; traditional Russian family values are being challenged by the rapidly changing Russian political, social and economic landscape. At the heart of this story is the relationship between the parents and their children, with a particular focus on Vera.

This movie, made during the waning years of the Soviet Union, is a marked departure from the "regular" Soviet movies of the day. It portrays the rebellion of the title character, a young woman coming of age. And the realities of things to come are already evident in the movie, with shortages, alcoholism and a sense of social drift.—Neel V Kumar <neelvk@iname.com>

In Russia, the ordinary teenager Vera (Natalya Negoda) lives a leisured life with her drunkard father and her simpleton mother, without working and waiting for the calling for a technical course of telephone operator. Her brother Victor (Aleksandr Negreba) lives in Moscow with the family of his own and occasionally visits his dysfunctional family and Vera, being always motive for arguing. When Vera meets the student of university Sergei (Andrei Sokolov), they fall in love for each other and decide to get married. Sergei moves to Vera's house, but lives in conflict with her father. This relationship leads the family to a tragedy.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil