How I Ended This Summer

How I Ended This Summer isn't a film about the Arctic or the Russian Meteorological Service. It is a film with a generation gap, a technology gap, an experience gap and a trust gap between two men working at a met hut on the Russian north coast towards the end of summer. An older man wed to a 75 year tradition of manual met reading and regular radio transmissions and a young one threatening that way of life with computer telemetry. One mistake leads too quickly to another and things spiral rapidly out of control in a confined environment (ironically, thousands of square kilometers of arctic landscape). It brings into sharp focus how we rely on social norms, the interventions of other people or at least on being able to get away from people to avoid screwing things up even more than we already have.

Sergei Puskepalis plays the older Sergei Gulybin with a threatening combination of aloofness and superior competence, but it is Grigory Dobrygin who steals the show playing the younger Pavel Danilov displaying just the right combination of diffidence, fear and bravado.

Ian's rating 2.5/5