MY FRIEND YETI

The film focuses on an extraordinary person called Igor Burtsev. He has traveled half the world in the search for Yeti. And though his friends and colleagues look at his hobby with irony he is not planning to give up. He is sure that Bigfoot is somewhere near, and they are bound to meet some day. In fact? it doesn’t really matter whether the long awaited meeting is to happen, or not. What matters is that Burtsev’s loyal friend called Yeti prompts him every day to keep moving forward.

VLADIMIR KRIVOV

Was born in  1973 in the city of Kursk. In 2007 he graduated from the Humanities Institute of TV&Radio Broadcasting named after M.A. Litovchin, the Faculty of Sound Engineering. Since 2003, Vladimir has been working on Russian TV as an editing director and a sound engineer. My Friend Yeti is his debut as a documentary film director.

This film is an attempt to make sense of time and society through a specific person. Personality is a marker, a phenomenon, and, in a sense, a product of the time and society in which we live. On the one hand - escapism, escape to your fictional world, an imaginary friend-Bigfoot, even, to some extent, the hero's infantilism, his ‘childish’ stubbornness, Idea Fix, his loneliness. On the other hand, the goal to which he stubbornly goes with downright enviable energy and perseverance, but subconsciously does not want to solve it, because he is comfortable in the state of this constant search, which only gives him an incentive to live. At the same time, in the course of the film, many questions are raised, but there are no direct and unambiguous answers, and there can not be. The viewer is invited to decide for himself how to treat the main character, whether to show sympathy, empathy( compassion), or to condemn, declare a madman, a fool…
The figure of the main character is very ambiguous. This also shows the attitude of his family and colleagues towards him. Does this prevent him from living? Multiple marriages, the inability to care for anyone but yourself, leaving two families for an ephemeral, shaky purpose… Is this an indicator of mental laziness? Or is it, on the contrary, his salvation? Interest and excitement, only giving vitality in the declining years?

DOKer 2021 — Doker Kids