BORIS RYZHY

A film on poetry, the Russian Mafia, suicide, love and the tragedy of the Perestroika years. A portrait of a young 21st-century poet for whom life became unbearable.

The Russian poet Boris Ryzhy was handsome, gifted and achieved already considerable literary fame. So why did he take his own life at the age of 26? A quest to find the answer takes the filmmaker to the criminal neighbourhood in the cold industrial city of Yekaterinenburg where Boris grew up.

Through conversations with neighbours, family and friends, she pieces together a picture of the passionate and complex life of the poet. What emerges is a penetrating portrait of the perestroika generation, who lost all certainties, becoming a generation of criminals and bodyguards. But despite all, Ryzhy loved this unhappy world, populated half by prisoners and half by their guards. He tried to transform its ugliness into the philosopher's gold of poetic prosody.