Babusya

In a house by a lake, vital Tusya long-sufferingly manages her daughter’s household. When her daughter becomes an invalid years later, her son-in-law Ivan forces the old woman to give her house to her grandchildren and he carts her off to her sister Anna’s. Anna has to deal with her drunkard of a son Vitya, though her daughter Líza is a successful journalist in Moscow. The sisters recall their past, living in harmony with each other and their neighbours. Then Anna breaks her hip and has to go to hospital. The energetic Líza tries to foist Tusya back onto her relatives. Having found himself a new woman, widower Ivan refuses. Her granddaughter’s former husband, who started a business thanks to the sale of her house, doesn’t want her at his luxurious villa. She would also be in the way of her granddaughter’s business at her luxurious apartment. Her grandson Tolik has his own troubles: he lost a brother in Chechnya and his house too, and his daughter Olya has become mute after an explosion. Nonetheless he offers the old woman a temporary roof over her head. But she decides to follow the “voice of an angel.” Before leaving she visits her great granddaughter. Olya calls and wakes her parents: ‘Grandma’s gone!’ Tolik runs out into the freezing night… The episodic plot, interlarded with shots of the northern landscape, offers a cross-section of Russian society and highlights the mentality and characteristic attitudes of people coping with the current economic transformation.