16-year-old Lilya lives with her mother somewhere in what was once the Soviet Union. She's excited because her mother's new boyfriend is taking them to America, but at the last minute the mother breaks the awful news: Lilya must stay behind, the mother may come for her later. She is forced to move into a dreadful place where the previous occupant recently died and her only real friend is Volodya, an 11-year-old homeless boy. Then she meets Andrei, who isn't like the other men - he says he'll take Lilya to Sweden - but Andrei turns out to have another agenda altogether.
This new film by Lukas Moodysson, the director of Show Me Love, is a very grim depiction of the grinding poverty in some parts of the old USSR and the way the rich western countries are exploiting their eastern neighbours. Mostly filmed in Estonia, the film benefits from a great performance from Oksana Akinshina as Lilya - Akinshina previously appeared in the late Sergei Bodrov Jr's Sisters. I could have done without the hand-held camerawork, and the occasional flashes of fantasy, but they don't matter that much because the central performance here is so very powerful and the sad little story so utterly, tragically real.
