The Stroll 2003

Taking to the streets with the mobility that Russian Ark applied to the city’s most famous interior, The Stroll accompanies a beautiful young woman as she banters with two young admirers making their way around St Petersburg on a summer afternoon. The handheld camera floats and turns with virtuosity around the three fast-talking, hormone-charged twenty-somethings, providing fascinating insight into the expectations, tastes and sexual politics of the first generation of Russians to have grown up without Communism. The editing, fast and fluent, provides the feeling we’re watching a film made in one take, immersing us in the sights and sounds of the streets and plazas. The love story that unfolds suggests a familiar scenario of best friends, one a poet, one a man of action, becoming romantic rivals, but it turns out to be something more surprising – and revealing. 

“A refreshing look at a modern Russian urbia… Alexey Uchitel, in collaboration with Moscow theater troupe the Petr Fomenkos Workshop, pulls off the impressive stunt to often exhilarating effect.” — Dennis Harvey, Variety