SCARECROW

PUGALO

By Dmitrii DAVYDOV

REASON8 FILMS - as SALES

Drama - Completed 2021

People avoid and fear her but make their way quietly to her door, because only she can resolve problems of all kinds. She is a healer, a hermit, a holy fool and a drinker, who gave up on herself a long time ago. She knows the saving grace she administers is destroying her.

Festivals
& Awards

Kinotavr 2020
Grand Pirx, Best Actress
Rotterdam IFFR 2021
Harbour
    • Year of production
    • 2021
    • Genres
    • Drama
    • Countries
    • RUSSIA
    • Languages
    • RUSSIAN
    • Duration
    • 72 mn
    • Director(s)
    • Dmitrii DAVYDOV
    • Synopsis
    • Concerned villagers bring Scarecrow to the clinic, where a young woman is dying of a gunshot wound accidentally inflicted by her husband. The new doctor recommends taking the woman to the city; but the district police officer Ivan argues she would not survive the trip. Despite her initial resistance, Scarecrow agrees to intervene, after she hears that if the woman dies, inspectors would come to turn the whole town upside down and the children would be left in the hands of the idiot who shot their mother. Scarecrow asks to be left alone with the dying woman.
      As she doubles over vomiting, Scarecrow tells Ivan the woman will be all right. She asks if he has any news for her. He has none, but gives her some money and asks her not to buy vodka with it. Scarecrow walks alone at night drinking from the bottle. She visits a friend who stokes a giant furnace and has a cot in the boiler room, where Scarecrow drinks and complains.
      Scarecrow goes to the general store to buy bread, but the local thug Stepan and his buddies kick her out. A woman arrives at her home with a bag of groceries and a bottle of vodka, her husband’s tool is out of order. They have tried everything and don’t believe in healers, but have heard a lot about Scarecrow. She asks the husband to drop his shorts and orders the wife to go outside. Later, Scarecrow wretches and spits as the couple take off.
      Scarecrow lives in squalor and dark primeval solitude. A neighbor arrives to beg one more time for help for her daughter, but Scarecrow holds firm and turns her away.
      Three people arrive with their grandmother, who does not want Scarecrow to come near. They leave her to work. A man brings fire wood and asks Scarecrow to help his son, who recently started stuttering. At night, Scarecrow plays the fool outside a neighbor’s kitchen and is later spied through her window wildly dancing alone, as if possessed. A passing thug sees her and spits.
      After an altercation at the clinic, Scarecrow gets badly beaten by Stepan, whose wife is pregnant and soon needs Scarecrow’s help.
      Scarecrow holds out hope that she will one day find her daughter and start a better life. Ivan’s leads in the city find the daughter’s address. Scarecrow sets out for a reunion that was not meant to be.
      She returns to the village to in despair. Even as she knows the help she gives has been draining away her own life force, Scarecrow resolves to reverse course and help her neighbour’s daughter, no matter how damaging it will prove to be.