Antwerp

Digging for memories from a long distant past, an elderly Russian man sets out on his final journey in an effort to piece together events from his youth. In a poetic voice-over, he describes how he arrived in Antwerp, Belgium as a boy, in an overcrowded train from Russia. Thousands of Russians left everything behind in their bid for a better life. Fragments of his first views of this harbor city come into view: the seagulls, the mist, the ships, and the dockside. We see the dejected, worn out faces of people in a strange city, sacks slung over their shoulders, their feet frozen. For the first time, he realized what freedom was - and he was scared. His desire to dredge up memories vanishes when reality turns out to be more distressing and estranging then he had anticipated. But hope returns when he walks through a room filled with forgotten memories. The filmmaker was inspired by the book by the Russian historian Vladimir Rodin, who also recorded the voice-over.