The 30th Toronto International Film Festival

... Winner of the Best Film award at the Moscow Film Festival, Aleksei Uchitel's Kosmos kak predchuvstvie [Dreaming of Space] (2005), set in 1957 Russia near the Norway border, makes running references to the beginnings of the space program, though its real centre seems to be the obsession of an excitable young short-order cook and amateur boxer (Yevgeny Mironov) with a mysterious working-class-hero type (Yevgeny Tzyganov) who may be preparing to flee the USSR. An elaborate subplot about the protagonists' romantic relationships with two sisters serves only to transform the younger man's obsession into an almost tearful state of reverie. The final movement of the film fragments into a phantasmagoria, as an alternative to confronting the nature of the male bond. Confusing and confused though it may be, Kosmos kak predchuvstvie has surprising emotional range, and Uchitel displays a Hollywood-like fluency in mixing a variety of disparate camera styles. ...