Loveless

Loveless (Нелюбовь, 2017) is a Russian drama directed by Andrei Zvyagintsev that you can watch online on iFILM. A France-Russia-Germany-Belgium co-production, it took the Jury Prize at Cannes and made the Oscar shortlist for Best Foreign Language Film.

Boris and Zhenya — played by Alexey Rozin and Maryana Spivak — are in the final, bitter stretch of a divorce. Both have new partners waiting. Both are in a hurry to be done. Their twelve-year-old son Alyosha registers this; he knows he is no one's priority. After one more vicious fight between his parents, he vanishes. The search that follows exposes not just a missing child, but how thoroughly two people can hollow themselves out.

Zvyagintsev made this with cinematographer Mikhail Krichman, who frames a grey Moscow winter with the warmth stripped entirely out. It is not a thriller — the child's fate is almost secondary to what the investigation reveals about the adults around him. Uncomfortable, precise, and hard to shake. Stream Loveless (2017) on iFILM.