Strawberry Field

One day of a freakishly hot St. Petersburg summer — that's the whole canvas of Strawberry Field (2010), a comedy-drama you can watch online on iFILM. Konstantin Seliverstov turns a heatwave into an excuse to chase a dozen oddballs out of their flats and into the open city.

The plot is really a web of lives brushing past each other. Anna, a composer drowning in self-doubt; Vovik, an actor mostly in his own head; Sasha Markovich, a director too principled for his own good; Sergey, a lovesick concert-hall watchman; Marina, a student with a job nobody mentions out loud. Yekaterina Kleopina, Nikolay Molodozhyon and Anna Ilyushchenko head the ensemble. No big resolutions, just people drifting in and out of one another's afternoons.

This is talky, low-key auteur cinema — long on conversation, short on action, charming in its characters' general disarray. A good fit if you miss the indie Russian films of the 2000s. Stream Strawberry Field (2010) online on iFILM.