2000, BETACAM SP, DVD, 95 min.

Director: Oleg Mavromatti

Starring : Egipetskii Mag, Elena Lapteva;

English voice over : David D'Agostino

Camera, editing & 3D Animation : Oleg Mavromatti

Music : DJ Hlam

The BASTARDS (Выблядки)

- Prize for the Most Honest Film, Stik Moscow Film Festival, 2003
- First prize of Dreamcatcher International Video and Film Festival 2000, Kiev, Ukraine

Available with English voice over.

Nikita Chrustev said in the beginning of the ‘60s that he was going to abolish money, making it possible to show the last thief on TV. These social works were illustrated in the film “The Lst Thief”. The main character, the last criminal is freed, and comes out into a bright, communistic utopia, with no place for bourgeoisie economy or thievish instincts. He is shocked. What can one steal if everything is free? He feels totally left out of this society.
The main character in “Bastards”, a young borderline city dweller, feels the same way. He tries unsuccessfully to adapt to the modern Russian capitalist’s society’s dog-eat-dog world. It is not his game. The world around him lives according to rules dictated by black-market cash and Chechen wars. It is a cruel and unjust world where only hitmen armed with wads of dollars instead of brains can survive. For a young Russian, money is a concrete sign of power and violence, with nothing abstract or virtual about it. Even the new state ideology lives of bloody oil dollars. There is no longer any place for dreams in Russia. An anti-utopian era has arrived.

Oleg Mavromatti; Text for the catalogue of the exhibition Money/Pengar/Dengi, 2001, Stochholm Museum of Art