Attraction

Attraction (Prityazhenie, 2017) is a Russian science-fiction drama you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Fyodor Bondarchuk. An alien craft crashes over a Moscow housing district, turning the ordinary Chertanovo suburb into ground zero for first contact.

Soldiers seal off the blocks, troops mass around the wreck, and residents brace for evacuation. Yulia (Irina Starshenbaum), daughter of the colonel running the operation, ends up at the center of it and meets one of the visitors, a being named Hekon. Her boyfriend Artyom (Alexander Petrov) and the local gang see only an invader come to take their streets. A teenage love triangle swells into a harder question: can people accept anyone who looks nothing like them? Oleg Menshikov plays the father caught between orders and conscience.

Bondarchuk delivers something rare for Russian cinema, a big-budget sci-fi spectacle with a striking ship design and grey tower blocks framing every shot. Under the action sits an uneasy parable about mob fear and the outsider. Worth a look if you want blockbuster genre filmmaking from outside Hollywood. Stream Attraction (2017) online on iFILM.