Fireworks
2020 · 18m · Russia
Directed by Nikita Grushin
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender, tense
A minivan moves through Saint Petersburg at night, dropping passengers one by one at different locations — each member of a coordinated terrorist cell about to strike. The film follows one young man who, while poised to carry out an attack, encounters ordinary people and fleeting moments of beauty that force him to choose.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Six grand and a long lens turning a bombing thriller into a humanist parable. I'll bite — guerrilla scrappiness and a real 2017 Petersburg ghost give this enough teeth to forgive the 'beauty of the world' redemption arc.
Grushin reframes the ticking-bomb thriller through a Bressonian humanism — the long-lens, guerrilla street capture recalls the Dardennes more than any genre antecedent. A $6,000 budget yielding this kind of moral inquiry is the gesture I came to attend to.
An 18:21 thriller shot guerrilla on a long lens for $6K, reframing the Saint Petersburg cell as quiet humans dropped off one by one — the minivan blocking is doing the structural work here, treating each stop like a separate one-take vignette. Curious whether the empathy turn lands or feels imposed.
Reviews
Despite the literal 'ticking bomb' of its premise, Fireworks is less a taut thriller than a humanistic exercise in empathy.
Festivals
- Spirit of Fire International Festival of Cinematographic Debuts 2020
- shnit Worldwide Shortfilmfestival 2020
- Moscow International Film Festival 2020
- BRNO16 International Short Film Festival 2020