“Leaves enough to admire as a portrait of human struggle in the face of worse options.”

If you were forced to choose between fighting in an unjust war, spending your days in jail, or going into self-imposed exile, what would you pick? The answer seems evident, but that this choice is actually more difficult than it appears is the subject of Austrian filmmaker Patric Chiha’s latest documentary A Russian Winter. Following a group of young Russians who left their country in the wake of Russia’s attack on Ukraine, Chiha’s film shows that homesickness and a deep ennui in a new place they can’t really call ‘home’ deeply affects the lives of these ‘vagrants’, as one of them calls himself. At times as listless as its subjects, but with solid artistic merit in the way he frames their story, A Russian Winter is not Chiha’s strongest effort, but leaves enough to admire as a portrait of human struggle in the face of worse options.

While A Russian Winter follows four strangers in a strange land, Chiha’s main focus is on two of them, Yuri and Margarita, who are friends but not lovers. The bulk of the conversations Chiha observes in cities like Istanbul and Paris, temporary stops on a journey with no well-defined ending, are between these two, and initially their talks are held on couches in nondescript surroundings. The stark contrast of these earlier moments, bathed in intense monochromatic colors, from red to green to blue, with the sleek lines and emptiness of the decor is alienating, and Chiha intercutting these with outdoor shots where his subjects are framed against the unrelenting steel, glass, and concrete of a soulless city make for an almost hostile environment.

The further we go into Yuri and Margarita’s world, however, the more Chiha lets sunshine and nature into the frame. It’s a representation of their journey, as they are slowly finding their footing in a new world. But their old one isn’t completely forgotten. Reflecting on their flight and on what their new ‘homes’ have brought them, they also speak of the chasm between their generation and that of their parents, and how the older people, indoctrinated for decades, view the war and Mother Russia in a completely different light. The men have lost their fathers, and given the fact that they appear to be in their late 20s or early 30s, that tells you something of the type of soldier Russia is pushing through the grinder in Ukraine.

What holds A Russian Winter back from being an insightful look into the psyche of a younger generation distancing themselves from a psychotic leader is the monotony of the conversations. Whereas Chiha visually builds an arc, the verbal content gets stuck, and even at a brief 90 minutes the film is a tough nut to crack. His subjects aren’t very animated, despite being photogenic, and their tête-à-têtes get moored in recycled reflections on what they left behind. A more straightforward documentary with an interviewer probing a little deeper might have gotten more out of them, but Chiha elects to show their emotional journey through his visuals. This is an admirable and certainly more artistic way to approach the subject matter, but unfortunately it robs A Russian Winter of dramatic heft and insightful commentary.