Highway

A loud drum-roll. We see a boy in turquoise trousers and a violet jacket lifting a 32-kilogram weight from the ground with his teeth. He then lies down on a rug covered with shards of glass, as his father lets the weight drop upon him. Miraculously, the boy is unharmed. He jumps up and bows before the camera, as if to thank the cinema audience as well. This is how, from the first scene onward, Highway coaxes the spectators under its spell. Travelling straight through the no-man´s land of the republics situated in the south of the former USSR, Sergei Dvortsevoy accompanies a small family circus. In front of a background of barren steppes, the artists show their circus acts to a handful of villagers, transforming the empty landscape into an enchanted world which the director captures in precise shots. In his virtuoso visual compositions, the magic of the circus blends with the magic of the cinema. Yet after the performances, reality catches up with the artists. The magic of the circus world evaporates, making way for the prayers of the father, a devout Muslim, while the children scream, argue and fight. Their mother, exhausted from the tour, is at the end of her nerves, and the rundown mini-bus that takes the family from village to village is having trouble starting up. Dvortsevoy succeeds in portraying the circus artists´ lives in a multi-layered way, and his quiet rhythm allows the viewer time to move within the loaded field of people, animals, reality and magic.