The winner of the Venice Days Director’s Award at the 2020 Venice Film Festival, writer-director Philipp Yuryev’s immersive coming-of-age drama The Whaler Boy finds a unique location to tell the coming-of-age story. Set in an isolated village on the Bering Strait, the film follows a 15-year-old boy who is a whale hunter that starts to dream of the outside world when the internet comes to his village and he discovers a webcam model. Ahead of a January 14 release in theaters and Virtual Cinema via Film Movement, we’re pleased to debut the exclusive trailer.
Rory O’Connor said in his review, “To skin a quote from The Social Network, it’s probably better to be accused of necrophilia these days than to be accused of whaling. Less so in the world of The Whaler Boy—a new Russian film tantalizingly set in that vast nation’s furthest reaches—wherein a young lad contends with the hormones and boredoms of rural life while casting longing looks to the West (which sits, in this case, just 50 miles East). The subject of his longings is an American Camgirl with the handle HollySweet999. Oh, to be young and feel love’s keen sting.”
See the exclusive trailer below.
The Whaler Boy opens in theaters and Virtual Cinemas on Jan. 14.