Roads to Koktebel

An unemployed engineer travels with his son from Moscow to Koktebel in an attempt to escape their past. The film’s characters may be in a constant state of transit, yet Roads to Koktebel’s narrative is surprisingly static, focussing on isolated moments of personal contemplation rather than the wider movement of time. A visually arresting road movie concerned with the generation gap separating post-glasnost children from their pre-glasnost parents, 2003's Roads to Koktebel elegantly examines the complex paradigm of shifting cultural identity, with the film’s focus on a fractured paternal bond presenting the audience with an arresting metaphor for the changing state of Russian masculinity in a shifting political landscape.