Masterpieces of the 21st Century: The Return (2003), Impressive Debut by Russian Director Andre Zvyagintsev

Russian director Andre Zvyagintsev’s debut feature won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, is dense with visual obliqueness and textual mystery.

There is an unknowable, cruel patriarch at its center.

Two brothers, 15-year-old Andrey (Vladimir Garin) and younger Ivan (Ivan Dobronravov), go on a camping trip with a man (Konstantin Lavronenko) who is supposedly their father, although he’s been missing since Ivan was a baby and no one knows his whereabouts.

His authoritarian parenting style soon rubs Ivan the wrong way, but the brothers have no real choice when he compels them to row out to a remote island in the far north.

This painterly study in blues and grays offers a portrait of boys and men unable to love or even trust one another.

It’s one of the most exciting and influential Russian films of the quarter-century, spearheading a resurgence of the country’s cinema that sadly declined as Putin’s regime stifled artistic expression.