The poet’s son

Genre: Drama

Langage: Russian

Subtitles: french, english, german

Format: 16mm (shooting), DCP (final)

Sound: 5.1.

Duration: 90 min

Countries: Belgium (Clin d’œil, Dérives), France (Petit à Petit Production), Germany (Yellow Blackbird)

Year: 2026

SYNOPSIS

In a small Russian town, against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine, Senya, 26, escapes  mobilization through a desperate act: during his draft evaluation, he swallows the mercury from a thermometer. Committed for three months to a psychiatric hospital, he returns to his snow-covered hometown. The war is on everyone’s mind, coffins come back from the front, forced enlistments continue, and the idea of resuming a normal life seems out of reach.

He returns to the cramped apartment he shares with his father, Alexey — a poet haunted by his failures and by the abandonment of his wife. Torn between melancholy, clumsy tenderness, and helplessness in the face of his son’s situation, Alexey tries to ease Senya’s burden by looking for work. Senya, in turn, struggles to maintain a fragile semblance of stability for them both.

He resumes his job as a cleaner at the Invalids’ Home — a care facility for veterans and the elderly. There, he finds brief moments of respite alongside Nina, the cook, and two residents: a young Ukrainian girl in a coma, and Vanya, a former miner plagued by insomnia. With them, through humble gestures, Senya begins to seek a path toward resilience.

Rita, his childhood love, returns and urges him to flee with her to Europe. But his bond with his father, and his fears, hold him back. When Rita leaves again, their parting leaves him alone with his isolation. A violent argument breaks out with Alexey, laying bare their buried frustrations.

At the Invalids’ Home, life and death cross paths: after confessing to Senya the crime that has haunted him, Vanya takes his own life — just as the young girl miraculously awakens from her coma.

Then, the axe falls: Senya receives a new draft order. In despair, he burns it and, through a snowstorm, goes to look for his father. He  finds him in a steam room — a former gulag site. There, in a rare moment of clarity, Alexey finally gives him his freedom — he tells his son to leave. Their final embrace, wrapped in steam, seals both their reconciliation and their farewell.

CREDITS

Scriptwriter and Director: Nicolas Graux

FESTIVALS

DIRECTOR

Nicolas Graux (1988, Belgium) graduated from the Institute of Media Arts in 2012 with a master’s degree in Film Directing. His films utilise sensory ethnography and fiction to explore the resonances of personal and collective memory, addressing contemporary social issues from an intimate perspective. His debut feature documentary, Century of Smoke (2019), about a young father struggling with opium addiction in Laos, premiered at Visions du Réel before touring widely. Since 2020 he has frequently collaborated with his partner, Vietnamese filmmaker Truong Minh Quý. Their co-directed short film Porcupine premiered at IFFR in 2023. In 2025, their latest film Hair, Paper, Water… was awarded the Golden Leopard at Locarno and went on to screen at NYFF, BFI London, Busan, Viennale and Doclisboa. The Poet’s Son, rooted in years of personal research in Russia, will be his first fiction feature,

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