When It Blinds, Open Your Eyes

Zhanna and Lyosha are survivors. At the beginning of the 1990s when Russia was in turmoil, they became addicted to heroin. Today, Zhanna and Lyosha are a couple in their mid-thirties living in a cramped apartment in St. Petersburg together with Lyosha’s mother Maria. It seems as if they are able to keep their drug addiction and its consequences under control. When It Blinds, Open Your Eyes delves into the cosmos of these three characters and observes their daily routine. The couple knows that their time is running out, and they juxtapose their fragile enjoyment of life against their grim sense of humour. The film highlights such moments, thereby becoming an intimate portrait of their brittle and ambivalent relationship.