Oscilloscope Laboratories Looks To May For DVD And Blu-ray Editions Of Filmmaker Dmitrii Kalashnikov’s The Road Movie

You have likely seen clips on Facebook or YouTube and been mesmerized by the carnage, the insanity and the surreal nature of what you are watching.   The words, “Oh MY GOD!” and “Oh shit” have likely been uttered during the experience of watching car wrecks and other weird happenings from the POV of a dash-cam.

The source of the best clips are all from Dmitrii Kalashnikov’s The Road Movie, an assemblage of footage taken exclusively from Russian dash-cams, and if movies are to entertain and capture one’s attention — especially good movies at that — then this baby has to be rated as one of the best of 2018!   Seriously!

Oscilloscope Laboratories acquired this gem early last year and knew that it was special; different … not really a narrative-like story, but The Road Movie is nevertheless a film that grabs and holds your attention.   So they worked some off-beat film festivals to good, even exceptional reviews and after a year of setting it up and getting the word out, Oscilloscope moved it to the arthouse circuit, where it continues to play one-off venues.

For those that haven’t had a chance to capture the carnage or other strange happenings (meteorite crashing, driving through a forest fire, animal antics, etc.) on the big screen — and see for yourself that there are apparently no road rules or driving schools in Russia — your chance will come on May 29 as that is the street that Oscilloscope Laboratories has assigned for the release of both DVD and Blu-ray editions of Kalashnikov’s The Road Movie.

The ARR works out to 130 days.   The Road Movie is presented in Russian with optional English subtitles … since the film is such a visceral experience the action literally speaks for itself.

Bonus features include the featurette titled “Dash Cam Documentary,” which is a video session with filmmaker Dmitrii Kalashnikov, and two of his short films — Waiting for the Show and Film About Love.

Also heading home on May 29 from Oscilloscope Laboratories as both DVD and Blu-ray product offerings is Estonian writer/director Rainer Sarnet’s film adaptation of Andrus Kivirähk’s folklore novel “Rehepapp ehk November,” which was titled for the screen as simply, November.

News came out of the Tribeca Film Festival last year that Oscilloscope had acquired this strange “fairy tale” or fable about life — especially life during the winter — in medieval-like Estonia.   Once in house, Oscilloscope took the film on the road and entered November in competition in one film festival after another, where it literally won everything.   

Estonia even got on board with the success that Oscilloscope had achieved and presented November to the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences as its official entry for the 2017 Best Foreign Language Oscar competition.

After the festival circuit rollout, Oscilloscope has taken the film out to arthouse venues where the feedback has been strong.   For the record, the ARR works out to 95 days.

It’s winter in Estonia and Sarnet has filmed his tale in black and white, which makes these dreary months all the more so.   The farmers, peasant and village folk seem to spend the cold months stealing from each other and worshipping contraptions that are called “Kratts” … boredom and endless time with little to do but survive perhaps drove these people nuts.   The Sweds, the Germans and the Russians all ruled over Estonia at one time or another, so perhaps the going-on here help explain why they all lost interest and left the Estonians to themselves.

In any case, set against this winter of bizarre behavior and general weirdness is the story of a young woman named Liina (Rea Lest), who is smitten with a local lad by the name of Hans (Jörgen Liik), but his interests are elsewhere.   She is eventually driven mad by his lack of interest and, well, let’s just say that the narrative gets very odd and let it go at that.

November, a fantasy, is like Jean Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast or Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal — both also filmed in glorious black and white — needs to be taken in visually as the narrative is secondary to the proceedings.

November is presented in Estonian and German with optional English subtitles.  Bonus features include test footage of the Kratts, the featurette titled “The Supernatural Lore of November” and Johannes Pääsuke’s 1913 short silent film titled Retk Läbi Setumaa (aka: Journey Through Setomaa), which is a snapshot of peasant life in the southern part of Estonia prior to World War I.