Storyline

Yula is a beautiful 10-year-old girl who lives in the shadow of the abundance of Moscow-in Europe's largest junkyard called the Svalka. Situated 13 miles from the Kremlin, just on the outskirts of Putin's big showcase of a city, the Svalka is a huge mountain of trash, 17 stories high and stretching for over 2 miles. It is a fenced, walled-in area, heavily guarded by security to keep intruders out. No trespassing and no filming is allowed here, where inside the dump's walls, criminal activity is unchecked. When one enters the Svalka, he becomes a slave employed by the mafia who run the dump's illegal recycling centers. Vodka is a currency here. For most of the people who enter the Svalka, this is their last stop before death, especially when the cold Russian winter storms sweep across this mountain of waste. Although life is grim and dismal for the Svalka's inhabitants, it also brings out the best in people. They generously share their vodka and last breadcrumbs with each other and open up their ramshackle sheds to shelter those who need it. Despite the misery that life here has to offer, people strive for normality. Yula dyes her hair and puts on makeup to look beautiful. She cracks jokes; she listens to music beautifully performed by Dima the "Guitarist." She reads magazines that she finds in the dump and listens to the radio in order to know what's going on in the outside world-a world she can only glance at from her mountain of trash. Since childhood, Yula, like others who live in the dump with her, has made ends meet by sorting Moscow's refuse. She dreams of escaping this desolate land, yet year after year passes and nothing changes for her. "I'd like to hope for the best, but it never happens. Only bad things happen, and they get worse and worse. Maybe it works backward. You should hope for the worst, then everything will turn out just fine," worries a 16-year-old Yula. For a period of 14 years, the film follows Yula's life-from her innocent childhood games with the other children to her first love as a teenager, until she, as a grown woman, realizes that her future lies in her own hands and it's up to her-and her alone-to change her destiny; to try and have a normal life outside of the Svalka's walls.

11 wins & 6 nominations