How to Save a Dead Friend is a portrait of a Russian youth with a profound sense of unhappiness. It immediately sets the tone not only through its title but also through its opening scene, which shows the filmmaker, Marusya, accompanying her ex-lover Kimi on his final journey to the cemetery. In the subsequent scenes, which flashback a few years, as Marusya shares some of the first images she shot when she was 16, she declares being convinced and determined that her sixteenth year would be her last. Surrounded by friends who were committing suicide, living in a climate of deep nihilism in the face of a repressive Putinist society with no prospects for the dreams of freedom, Western culture, and a better life of this shattered youth, Marusya reveals every aspect of this existence blocked from all sides. From violent news images to the most personal moments of excess, euphoria, depression, and banality of her daily life, she does not hesitate to reveal the slightest imperfections, those of bodies and skin as well as those of the images captured and those of her dreary suburb and brutalized Moscow. Set to the music of Joy Division and Russian grunge, these images speak loudly of a betrayed and forgotten youth who still manages to function somehow. Kimi makes the world a little more bearable for Marusya, even though they see no future in their reality. One could easily believe that this chronicle of a foretold death would be unbearably demoralizing, but the work of the young documentarian is quite the opposite — illuminating, invigorating, infuriating, and deeply moving. Why? Because by delving into the intimacy of this Russian youth, Marusya invites the audience to share in their pain and misery, to understand their desperate hopes, to miraculously find beauty amidst the ugliness, and to believe in themselves and their unsuspected inner strength.

Claire Valade
Critic and programmer