Beanpole

Beanpole

Winner of the Best Director Award in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, Beanpole (Dylda) is a haunting and visually stunning portrait of postwar trauma, survival, and the fragile hope that lingers in the aftermath of destruction.

Set in Leningrad in 1945, the film follows Iya, nicknamed “Beanpole” (Viktoria Miroshnichenko), a tall, soft-spoken young nurse whose quiet life is shattered when her closest friend, Masha (Vasilisa Perelygina), returns from the front. Bound by grief, love, and shared loss, the two women navigate a world struggling to rebuild itself—physically, emotionally, and morally.

Director Kantemir Balagov’s meticulous compositions and painterly color palette evoke both the beauty and desolation of recovery. Each frame, rich in muted greens and golds, captures the tension between life’s tenderness and its brutality.

Beanpole is not simply a war film—it is an intimate study of human endurance, portraying the cost of survival and the longing for connection amid unbearable pain. Achingly acted and masterfully directed, it stands as one of the most powerful cinematic explorations of trauma in recent memory.

Screening With:

Tsi Teyoto:te (Even In the Silence)

Canadian Shorts Showcase

A visual poem told entirely in Kanien’keha (Mohawk language) that examines the impacts of underage drinking in Indigenous communities and the struggle to overcome grief and past traumas through culture and traditional practices.

Rachel, a young Mohawk woman struggles with the aftermath of a terrible drunk-driving incident, forcing her to confront her trauma and mistakes in order to heal.

3 mins 30s
Canada, 2019
Dir. Jonathan Elliot
Language: Kanien’keha

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