“Eastern Western” film review

Dallas Film Festival

By Joe Baker

My favorite film at this year’s festival was a late-night screening of an unhurried western with three acts and an epilogue. Biliana and Marina Grozdanova’s Eastern Western is a flat-out masterpiece. Too often (and wearily so), the western concerns itself with frontier justice and law and order melee. The Grozdanova’s film is refreshing for the way it juggles expectation and becomes a gentle treatise on the fraternity that grows out of the immigrant experience in nineteenth century America. With the exception of one marvelously executed shootout, the film chooses to focus on campfire conversations, everyday life, and the hard necessity of friendship in an unknown territory.

Opening on immigrant Igor (Igor Galijasevic) and his young son as they fend for themselves in a wintery cabin, Eastern Western immediately enraptured me in the way it observes and harnesses the simple goodness of survival. There are interactions with brown bears. The act of keeping a crying two-year-old satisfied with the loss of his mother. And an icy landscape that sends shivers down the spine.

It’s here that friend Duncan (Duncan Vezain) arrives and invites Igor to help him on his horse ranch. It’s an offer Igor initially declines, but necessity soon prompts Igor to settle with Duncan and his family (also played by his real-life wife and two fair haired daughters). The second act of the film introduces more people during life on the ranch, and even though small moments of darkness encroach on the beautifully languid atmosphere, Eastern Western continues to spin an air of naturalism that’s hard to deny.

The third act and epilogue pack the most power as the film extends its worldview across generations and even oceans. I won’t spoil the fantastic epilogue, but Eastern Western is a film that more easily comments on the fragments of life’s endless circle than other efforts that spend 3 hours and CGI to bind people and worlds together. Just a wonderful film.

Eastern Western – International title

 

A U.S.A., Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria film co-production [El Jinete Films

Producers: Carter Boehm, Richard Gray, Biliana Grozdanova Marina Grozdanova, Adam

     Montierth, Donovan Montierth, Cameron Wheeless, Tony Armer, Igor Galijasevic,

     Brandon Regina

Directors: Biliana Grozdanova Marina Grozdanova

Story: Biliana Grozdanova Marina Grozdanova

Screenplay: Biliana Grozdanova Marina Grozdanova

Cinematography: Cameron Wheeless [color]

Music: Mikhail Alperin, The Bulgarian, Branko Mataja, Sergei Starostin, Huun Huur Tu

Running time: 108 minutes

 

Story: A son raised by two fathers, one from the European East and one from the American West, set on the cusp of the 20th century. Deep in the mountains of the American Frontier, Igor, an immigrant and recent widower, struggles to raise his two-year-old son Ivo in the harshness of winter. When Duncan, an American horse rancher and friendly acquaintance, decides to move his horse-breeding business and family to California, Igor and Ivo join the wagon train headed West. After a series of encounters with both friend and foe, Duncan is left with a decision that will affect the family’s future forever.”

 

Cast:

Duncan - Duncan Vezain

Igor - Igor Galijasevic

Ivo - Leonardo Galijasevic

Meag - Meag Belland

Father - Zdravko Strkalj

Sister - Dora Brtan

Shawn - Shawn Perkins

Walter - Walter Runningcrane Jr.

Luka - Luka Strkalj

Anna - Anna Vezain

Bonnie – Bonnie Vezain

Olivia - Olivia Vezain

Caleb - Caleb Zeiler

Soldiers - Stefan Bandic, John Budge