The Watchman

"The Watchman" (2019) is a Russian thriller you can watch online on iFILM, written, directed by, and starring Yury Bykov as Vlad — a forty-year-old who took a job guarding a condemned sanatorium because no one asks questions there.

One night a couple arrives at the gate. Stas and Vera are on the run from the people Stas once betrayed. Vlad lets them in. He has his own reasons to stay invisible, and some of them rhyme uncomfortably with theirs. What follows is a slow three-way standoff in a building that should have been torn down already.

Bykov makes films without mercy, and this is one of his more personal ones — he is in every scene, carrying Vlad's guilt without explaining it. Stream "The Watchman" (2019) on iFILM.