How I Ended This Summer
| How I Ended This Summer | |
|---|---|
Film poster
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| Directed by | Alexei Popogrebski |
| Produced by | Roman Borisevich |
| Written by | Alexei Popogrebski |
| Starring |
Grigoriy Dobrygin Sergei Puskepalis |
| Music by | Dmitry Katkhanov |
| Cinematography | Pavel Kostomarov |
| Edited by | Ivan Lebedev |
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Production
company |
TV Channel Russia
Koktebel Film Company |
| Distributed by | Channel One Russia (Russia) |
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Release date
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Running time
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124 minutes |
| Country | Russia |
| Language | Russian |
How I Ended This Summer (Russian: Как я провёл этим летом, translit. Kak ya provyol etim letom) is a 2010 Russian drama film directed by Alexei Popogrebski. It was critically acclaimed and garnered several awards and nominations; it was nominated for the Golden Bear at the 60th Berlin International Film Festival.
Meteorology student Pavel "Pasha" Danilov (Grigoriy Dobrygin) is spending the summer as an intern at an isolated, Soviet-era weather station on a remote Arctic island with only the older, experienced geophysicist Sergei Gulybin (Sergei Puskepalis) for company. Their sole job is to collect the weather and tide statistics every four hours on antiquated equipment, which they do in shifts, and report the readings by radio to the state meteorology center. Pasha is respectful and friendly, but he is afraid of the gruff Sergei, who is condescending to him, as he resents Pasha's temporary stay and is jealous that he knows how to operate their only computer.
Sergei takes the boat on an unauthorized fishing trip for a few days, and tells him not to mention this. When the radio operator urgently requests to speak with Sergei, Pasha dutifully makes up excuses why he cannot come on the radio. Eventually Pasha is told to take down a radiogram that Sergei's wife and young son have been "gravely injured" in an accident, although it is apparent they've been killed. He is told that a ship is headed to get them and instructed to simply give Sergei the message and then "leave him alone." The sad news keeps Pasha awake, but when he does sleep he oversleeps; the data goes unrecorded. Seeing Sergei's boat, he hastily grabs the logbook to fill in fake numbers, and in doing so knocks his radiogram under the desk. When Sergei comes ashore with the trout, he is in a good mood. He tells Pasha a warm story about his wife craving salted trout during her pregnancy. Pasha starts to say something, but Sergei interrupts and teaches him how to properly fillet a fish.
Once inside, Sergei quickly figures out that the Pasha made up the numbers in the log and explodes in anger, dragging Pasha inside and berating him. He tells him that the station has been continuously occupied since 1935, and that no matter how bad the conditions got, never had anyone just faked the numbers out of sheer laziness, and that now all their work is worthless. He accuses Pasha of being a "tourist" in the Arctic in order to write a pointless essay, "How I Ended This Summer" (a play on the clichéd "How I Spent My Summer Vacation.") Sergei tells him an intimidating story about the time one geophysicist apparently killed the other due to their strained relationship.
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