Cinema
Man Follows the Sun
Chelovek idyot za solntsem
Mikhail Kalik · 1961
Synopsis
Sandu is six years old. A friend assures him that by walking straight towards the sun one goes round the earth and returns to the starting point from the other side; he sets off to check. His day becomes a crossing of Chișinău, seen at a child's height: a seller of lottery tickets, a scientist from the Institute of the Sun, happy fathers outside the maternity ward, a watermelon shared at the market, a motorcyclist risking his life, workers who offer him their meal, a shoeshine man who lost his legs in the war, a funeral procession.
Context
Produced by Moldova-Film, the film runs seventy-one minutes; the music is by Mikael Tariverdiev, the cinematography by Vadim Derbenyov. Some see in it the influence of the Nouvelle Vague and of Lamorisse's Le Ballon rouge, and Andrei Tarkovsky cited it as an example of a “poetic cinema”. The party leadership in Moldavia reproached it for showing no Soviet achievement; after its author emigrated, in 1971, the film was withdrawn from distribution, then shown in 2008 at the Moscow festival.
Who it is for
In Russian; a film with almost no plot, to be followed like a long walk through the city.
Prizes and reception
Shown again in 2019 in a retrospective of its author's work at the Arsenal in Berlin, under the title Sandu Follows the Sun.