Reflective Encounters

“When Anastasia Veber’s Trap won the Short Film Golden Bear in Berlin of February earlier this year, it would only be a scant few days before we found out how uncomfortably prescient the film was. This is an exploration of Russia as a police state, which sees our two sibling protagonists try to find escape amongst a life of random police checks and stultifying daily lives.

At first this is a cold and stark affair, with a documentary-like feel that crackles with naturalistic tension as we explore the everyday lives of our lead characters. But – as we approach the climax – the film breaks with the previous rigid formality and morphs into something completely new. Heading into the realms of the absurd and the surreal, we’re given the sense of freedom and escape that the characters have been looking for: just maybe not in the way that we expected it.

But this tonal shift is never so jarring it throws the film off-kilter – for all the absurdity it seems in some ways the only response to the situation our protagonists find. Even without its defiant genre-breaking moves, Trap would be a fine piece of work. But Veber’s bold playfulness makes this an elegiac and sometimes breath-taking affair.”

— Laurence Boyce