Lyoshka is a boy from the middle of nowhere, who would never have thought he would fall in love with a beautiful girl “from the internet”. But she is neither from his village nor even from the Chukotka region! “All the girls there speak American,” his friend notes. The days, the whale hunt, and idle village life pass by, but the death of his grandfather in the tundra never comes any nearer. Shaking off the stories of his neighbours’ efforts to cross the Bering Strait on their way to Alaska, Lyoshka is determined to meet his bride, HollySweet999, and start a new life. There’s only one way, and it leads to Детройт!

Although the outline of the plot suggests an existential social drama, there is a heart-warming humour and a sense of effortlessness about Philipp Yuryev’s debut film. The scenes of everyday life in the small Chukotka village read like an early Jarmusch film born out of pop culture (The Beach Boys play unexpectedly after the caviar sandwiches), while the harsh textures of the environment are captured tenderly by the camera. Played convincingly by new actor Vladimir Onokhov, Lyoshka is no ordinary hero of a coming-of-age drama nor just a suburban boy dreaming of America. In this film that won the Best Director award at Venice Days, Lyoshka is not simply a “child” of his environment, but also lost between East and West.