The future is (still) bleak: the lives of youth on Russia’s margins in Vasilii Pichul’s Little Vera and Nataliia Meshchaninova’s The Hope Factory

Abstract

ABSTRACT Through a comparative analysis of the films Little Vera by Vasilii Pichul (1988) and The Hope Factory by Nataliia Meshchaninova (2014), the article examines the representation of youth living at the margins of Soviet/Russian society economically, socially and geographically. These films are connected not only by their narrative focus on young people coming of age amid political change, but by their utilisation of cinematic and narrative styles associated with the chernukha genre that emerged in late 1980s and early 1990s in Soviet cinema. Both films offer intimate and naturalistic portrayals of Soviet/Russian youth to explore themes including substance abuse, sex, trauma and young people’s quest to escape the confines of their current lives and create a future for themselves in their ‘new’ Russia.