An Independent Life

An Independent Life (1992)

Drama

This is the second installment of a three-part series of autobiographical films about the director's life. The first, which won various awards for its maker, was entitled Zamri Oumi Voskresni and was later retitled Zari, Umri, Vokresni ("Freeze-Die-Come to Life"). At the end of that film, set at the conclusion of World War II, the young Valerka was striving hard to overcome the inertia of just getting by, along with his sometime friend Galiya. In this one, he is adjusting to Galiya's death and is back in school and is living with his mother, a prostitute. After a girl at the school is found to have been gang-raped, the headmaster chooses Valerka to be one of the scapegoats, though he had nothing to do with the deed. The punishment seems mild enough, he was simply expelled from school. However, after quarrelling with his mother about the incident, he takes to the road, and discovers a society so bleak, degraded and hopeless that it is a wonder he remained alive.

Director: Vitali Kanevsky

Casts

	Elena Popova as мать Валерки
	Pavel Nazarov as Валерка
	Dinara Drukarova as Валя
	Toshihiro Watanabe as Ямамото
	Lidiya Dorotenko as
	Larisa Zhvaniya as Софья Аркадьевна
	Natalya Ipatova as
	Tatyana Ivanova as
	Galina Kuznetsova as
	Aleksandr Bashirov as
	Nikolay Kharitonov as
	Ivan Prais as
	Vladimir Ivanov as
	Elena Antonova as
	Vladimir Maksimov as

Crew