There Is Such a Lad

There Is Such a Lad (1966) is a Soviet comedy-drama you can watch online on iFILM — the directorial debut of Vasily Shukshin, shot entirely on location in the Altai region with real Siberian villages and non-professional locals filling out the background.

Pashka Kolokolnikov is a truck driver. Leonid Kuravlyov plays him as a man without ambition in the usual sense: he lies easily, does reckless things without calling them brave, and is genuinely only at ease when the people around him are doing well. His own life interests him less than everyone else's. Poet Bella Akhmadulina appears in a small role as a journalist. Shukshin's camera stays close to the landscape and the faces — the specific weight of Siberian roads, wooden fences, unhurried conversation.

For a debut the film is strikingly unforced. The warmth and irony that would define all of Shukshin's later work are already fully present here, wearing lightly. Watch There Is Such a Lad online on iFILM.