Director Hamlet Dulyan screened his new thriller film Forest at the 34th Window to Europe Russian cinema festival in Vyborg. The project was presented in the Vyborg Count section of the festival.
The movie is based on the mystical thriller novel of the same name by Svetlana Tyulbasheva. The book sold rapidly and won major national book awards in Russia, combining personal trauma with mysticism and psychological tension. Dulyan previously directed a 2021 adaptation of Yevgeny Zamyatin's novel We that was never released to viewers. Both films examine how people lose their human character when overcome by fear.
Forest stars Karina Razumovskaya as Vika and Lyanka Gryu as Lika. The two Muscovites are former colleagues with polar opposite personalities who are hardly friends. Their trip into the woods to pick cloudberries begins with mutual tension and a near car crash.
Vika is constantly gloomy and anxious about danger, while Lika obsessively gathers berries. When the dark Karelian forest cuts them off from reality, their journey becomes a survival game and a struggle against personal fear. A title card at the start of the film states that thousands of people die in forests every year.
The film touches on social topics including domestic violence. Dulyan moves the story from a detective plot with teenage romance into a fast-moving horror film. Composer Ilya Andrus created the music that follows the characters through the woods.
Village Conflicts and Persecution
A parallel plot line follows a suspicious family arriving in a remote village on the outskirts to start a quiet life. The family consists of a teenager named Grisha, played by Nikita Rodionov, his grandmother, played by Ekaterina Vasilyeva, and his aunt, played by Anzhela Belyanskaya. Grisha wants to find friends, but his main companion is a wolf that grew up with him from childhood.
Local residents treat the new arrivals with distrust. A conflict starts after Grisha's wolf kills a neighbor's dog. Soon after, a suspicious old woman who held a grudge disappears under unexplained circumstances. Her alcoholic son Venya, played by Nikita Kologrivyy, blames the family coming from the forest and starts a campaign of harassment against them.
Dulyan makes slight departures from the original book while keeping its plot twists. In his adaptation, the main characters face infernal forces and threats from others while seeking redemption rather than defeating the darkness.
Filming Conditions and Release Date
The film crew completed production in a short timeframe of just 15 days. Filming involved harsh weather conditions and required traveling by boat across Lake Ladoga to reach hard-to-access locations. Workers also built an entire village from scratch specifically for the movie.
Forest is scheduled to enter general theatrical release in Russian cinemas on November 20.
