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Director's Statement
The idea to shoot THE THIEF came to me three years ago. Very long ago I heard a story about a thief who, posing as an army officer, settles into communal flats with a woman and her young child, and then robs his unsuspecting neighbours. lt was easy to do, because a man in widely viewed as a trustworthy individual in the postwar country. Besides, I always wanted to shoot a film about my childhood, the way of life in communal flats, the stories I heard from older people ... That is how the idea for the script came to me.
The hero of the film is small boy Sanya (played by seven-year-old Misha Philipchuk), and we see the thief Tolyan through his eyes. Tolyan is the first man who comes into the life of Sanya's family, because Sanya, like many other postwar children, has never seen his father. The boy is both afraid of and attracted to Tolyan's aura of power and authority: Tolyan is rough with Sanya's mother, rigid with Sanya, but he can protect them and take care of any problem. And as the embodiment of any power and authority figure, the boy loves and hates Tolyan at the same time. This inner conflict becomes Sanya's central drama which will haunt him all his life.
I made the film about the childhood of the generation which influences upon the country's current life. For me it was important to comprehend and explain how and why the post-war generation has grown up as it has, and not in another way. And it seems to me I man-aged to do that ...
I confess to you every time I watch the film rushes, I worry about my heroes, and I really hope that the viewers will not be indifferent to them and their fates, either.