Something Better to Come

Yula is just like any regular teenager in almost every way: she experiments with makeup, dyes her blond hair red and then blond again, tries alcohol and cigarettes, and falls in love for the first time. So far so normal, but her living conditions are extraordinary, to say the least. Yula lives on Europe’s biggest landfill situated less than 20 kilometers (12 miles) from Moscow’s city center. On this unearthly place, trucks and forklifts drive to and fro shifting an endless supply of garbage. Together with her mother, a handful of other children, drunkards and outcasts, Yula spends her days foraging in the filth for food, for shelter material, and for something to do. Director Hanna Polak previously made the award-winning documentary about street kids around Moscow’s Leningradsky station, and this film follows Yula and her companions over a 14-year period. They admit to her that they see no alternative, and that they believe their lives are worth less than those of dogs. They also explain that there are people on the site who were once doctors, pilots, truck drivers and educators, and that life in Putin’s Russia is really tough. But then there is Yula again, who holds her head up high, lives her life and dares to dream of a little apartment of her own.