Shultes

The debut feature by Russian director of Georgian origin Bakur Bakuradze, about a lonely Moscow pickpocket.

The story follows Alex Schultes, who makes a living stealing wallets in the Moscow subway and leads a rigid, almost emotionless life: he goes jogging in the mornings, takes care of his ill mother, and visits his brother in the army — while remaining a stranger to himself. This film is one of the key works of the so-called “new quiet ones,” a generation of Russian directors who emerged in the 2000s. Its pace is indeed unhurried, without sharp dramatic jolts, but it’s precisely this quiet that allows us to look more closely at an “ordinary” person whose inner reality would otherwise remain hidden behind the everyday mechanics of existence.