A Room and a Half, or a Sentimental Journey to the Homeland
Roltory komnaty ili sentimentalnoe puteshestvie na rodinu

Russia, 2009, 130 Minute Running Time
Genre/Subjects: Animation, Biopic, Drama, Foreign
Language: Russian English Sub-Titles

Exiled to the United States in 1972, the famous Russian poet Joseph Brodsky always wanted to return anonymously to St. Petersburg, the city of his youth. Through a variety of imaginative techniques, sixty-nine-year-old animator Andrey Khrzhanovsky has made the Nobel Prize winner’s wish come true in his feature debut, A Room and a Half.
A fictional Brodsky narrates this nostalgic fantasy on board a cruise ship destined for Russia. Through a series of flashbacks, he recalls his childhood. He remembers, for instance, the return of his father, laden with gifts, from World War II, and his parents' affectionate reunion. It appears an idyllic time for the budding scribe who “live[s] in a city whose color [is] fossilized vodka.” 
But conditions for the Jewish family deteriorate as the city undergoes radical change. They are forced to move into cramped quarters – a room and a half, to be exact. Yet Khrzhanovsky’s animated sequences cast a magical light upon even this squalor, be they comical – as when Brodsky imagines his cat becoming a writer to document his experiences – or chilling, as when silhouetted cutout soldiers invade the city and destroy everything in their path. Such moments linger when Brodsky goes to college, where his writing becomes political. But even after he is banished, he never forgets the love of his parents or his Mother Russia. 
Through the seamless fusion of documentary footage, classical Russian music, still photography, recordings of Brodsky reading his work, and, of course, animation, Khrzhanovsky has created a film as poetic as his subject matter.

DIRECTOR: Andrey Khrzhanovsky
Producer: Andrey Khrzhanovsky, Artem Vassiliev
Editor: Igor Malachov, Vladimir Grigorenko
Screenwriter: Yuri Arabov, Andrey Khrzhanovsky
Cinematographer: Vladimir Brylyakov
Principal Cast: Alisa Freindlich, Sergei Yurskiy