Synopsis
Lida is 81 years old and lives in a dying Swedish settlement in Eastern Ukraine. While she and her little sister Maria were in a Soviet labor camp in Siberia in the 50s, Lida gave birth to her son Arvid. She has not seen Arvid since 1976, who now lives in St.Petersburg. Maria has, since their release from the camp, stayed in Siberia. The two sisters haven’t seen each other since. Lida and Maria are two of only six remaining speakers of the Old Swedish language, a soon to be extinct language dating from the 1800s.
A word from Tënk
Lida rambles. She narrates her story in a hoarse voice, moving from the distant to the present, evoking lost sons, a scattered family and gossip about her fellow pensioners.
In this film, bathed in an aura of mystery, cinematographer Anna Eborn constructs sublime tableaux, in which cold light brings out flashes of washed-out colour, heightening the timeless, poetic strangeness of this unlikely universe.
An old Swedish woman, with smiling eyes, hides her secrets beneath the fragmented tales of her memories. Sweden in the '30s, deprivation, war, labour camp in Siberia, then the Ukrainian hospice where she ends her days far from her loved ones.
But why does Lida live like this, sending no news back to her sister and son? A strange form of rebellion seems to simmer beneath the sinuous wrinkles of her mischievous face. The film, without lifting an impudent veil over the mysteries, underlines their unfathomable forces and tragic repercussions by re-establishing a form of magical communication between this dispersed family.
The slow disappearance of the pensioners, death lurking everywhere, languages disappearing and, with them, worlds collapsing - all this movement of slow dissolution does not prevent the movement of life from finding its groove, even in this hospice overlooked by the passage of time.
