Kak ya provel etim letom (Aleksey Popogrebskiy, 2010)

How I Ended This Summer reeks of Tarkovsky with its dragged-out takes and metaphysical saturation. This cannot possibly be a bad thing in itself, although it needs to have a driving purpose behind the tableaux.
On one level, the barren and forbidding landscape of the Russian Arctic is the subject, but also how it impacts on the human psyche, here that of two researchers stuck on a remote island through a summer of never-ending day. The protracted silence and longueurs serve to highlight the slightest word or gesture from the protagonists, creating a brittle tension that lends plausibility to their overreactions when the junior partner gets some news from the mainland that he's afraid to pass on.
Along the way, the film does fall foul of plot logic in other ways that the characters' mental instability can't quite explain. Nevertheless, the two actors put in powerfully modulated performances and the soundtrack of mostly ambient sound and ethereal photography combine to a hypnotic effect.

7/10