Submarine Man
June 1986, a young Russian named Mikhail Puchkov creeps to the edge of the Neva river in St Petersburg. He lowers a homemade submarine into the water and clambers in. Rolling his knees up to his chest, he pulls the hatch closed and sets off downstream into the inky dark. Few hours later he finds himself entangled in a fishing net. He is hauled out, arrested by the KGB and taken for interrogation. Mikhail (or ‘Misha’ as he prefers to be known), is a rebel inventor, a self-taught engineer who crafted his submarine alone in his basement year by year. His tale is one of the oldest there is - that of the classic mythic hero, on a quest to test himself and achieve a seemingly impossible objective against all odds. Misha’s story straddles the old and the new world - from his Soviet childhood, through the collapse of the USSR, to the contours of Putin era. A convulsive historical backdrop to a turbulent personal life. Along with the story of his sub, we’ll learn about his dysfunctional family - frayed by alcoholism, death and divorce, his time as a runaway, in a children’s prison, and then in the army, where he suffered from dedovshina, the Russian form of hazing. The film will fuse personal and social drama in a compelling character study. The essence of the film is freedom in all it’s forms, showing how daily struggles and dreams may eclipse even the most acute political change.