Chuzhaya rabota
Denis Shabaev
Russia | 2015 | 69 min
International Premiere
Languages : Russian, Tajik
Subtitles : English, French
Like his compatriots, applicants in search of a better life, who follow each other during the inaugural sequence of Not My Job before a finicky employee of the Russian migration department, Farrukh is leaving his wife and child behind in Dushanbe to join his fam- ily (his father, his mother and his two younger brothers) who live in a cramped slum in Moscow. To bring home a few roubles, the young Tajik, turned illegal immigrant, recycles metal, but dreams of becoming a famous actor. As he has the looks for the role, in a fictional film, he plays an immigrant falsely accused of a man’s murder... before really causing the death of another man in a road accident that lands him a spell in prison. The camera literally follows the foot- steps of this tragic character trying to find his way between the respect of his traditionalist parents and the will to integrate into a universe where no one is expecting him. With this first film, Denis Shabaev tells a cruel parable, whose dry and elliptical form captivates us from the first shot to the last.
Emmanuel Chicon