Swiss director Antoine Cattin’s thoroughly absorbing Holidays offers a fascinating – and absolutely prescient – look into the lives of a series of ordinary folk living in St Petersburg as they celebrate (or often simply endure) a series of Russian national holidays.
Russia is a country that celebrates a record number of public holidays, offering lots of opportunities for processions, fireworks, boozing and occasional misbehaviour.
This slice of Russian life is seen through the eyes of four very different folk (partly filmed by themselves) in St Petersburg – Dzhus Kamiev, a Kazakh immigrant veering from job-to-job and living in a hostel; Dina Garina, a trolleybus driver who hates immigrants; Nikita Agapov, an ebullient young urban climber and Anna Fiodorovna, a well-to-do housing manager who oversees a team of workers.
The film dips into the series of festivals throughout the calendar year, starting on New Year’s Eve as a brass band heads along the snowy city streets. Dzhus is selling Christmas trees before heading out to celebrate; Dina heads to her job on the trolleybus, but admits to a fellow worker she hopes she doesn’t have to work with a hijab-wearing ticket-selling colleague; Nikita is selling battery-powered balloons in the streets alongside a guitar-strumming Santa and Anna is making sure the weather doesn’t impact too badly on local buildings.
Flipping from holiday to holiday – from the Orthodox Baptism of Jesus holiday on January 19 and the Defender of the Fatherland Day in February, through to the Woman’s Day celebrations in Spring and the Scarlet Sails White Nights Festival in summer) the film explores these four individuals as they navigate modern-day Russia.
Watching anti-immigrant vitriol from Dina makes for uncomfortable viewing at times as she stares aggressively at immigrants on the streets, leads an anti-immigration rally and eventually has to face up to a police investigation of her behaviour as they track her down at work. “The war has already begun. Russians are killed, girls are raped. Soon it will be genocide. Immigrants abound…,” she tells her mother.
Dzhus and his hostel-dwelling friends fight off bed-bugs, go out partying around the city, acquire food via a little shop-lifting and get arrested by police wary about where they are from. He bickers with his ex-wife and struggles to find any kind of meaningful work.
Nikita and his friends sneak into buildings, climb onto roofs, fly drones and take selfies, and while they have brushes with the police and authorities their youthful enthusiasm balances the issues faced by Dzhus or the bitter rantings of Dina.
Anna is older and works in a more formal work structure. She sports a fur coat and happily shouts at staff as she aims to keep buildings functional. On Women’s Day, while young women protest on the streets shouting “shame, shame, shame” and are arrested by police, Anna and her fellow female workers are presented with flowers by male colleagues who make speeches about how important women are. She is not averse to cynicism, as she shares a few drinks with a friend afterwards who observes: “All year round they don’t even remember what a woman is and just on March 8 they come, some with flowers and booze, others with perfume.”
The festivals are often defined by boozing, fireworks and revelry, but just as often with police brutality and xenophobia. Police chase anti-Putin protestors and women who chant for peace, indicating how, while there is an underlying sense of nationalistic pride, there are also seeds of division lurking in the Russian shadows.
Towards the end Anna, who had left her job and whose father died recently, sadly says: “I’ll go to the Ukraine and live in my sister’s house…it is my homeland,” while the youthful Nikita adds, “I’ll go to the front in Ukraine and train our military to fly drones.” Final footage shows him in military gear running through trenches looking like a terrified youngster…so different from the confident urban climber thrilled to challenge authority and climb atop buildings and view the St Petersburg streets from lofty perches.
Switzerland, 2022, 87mins
Dir: Antoine Cattin
Production Les Films Hors-Champ, SRG SSR, RTS Radiotelevision Suisse
Producer: Elena Hill
Editor: Antoine Cattin
