The Return

Two brothers in a provincial Russian town have grown up with no memory of their father, knowing him only from an old photograph. When he suddenly reappears after years away, he takes the boys on a trip to a remote region, with their mother's reluctant agreement. What begins as an outing soon becomes a test of the man's authority over his sons, and the relationship between the three is strained as they travel further from home.

The Return is the feature debut of director Andrey Zvyagintsev, who wrote the screenplay with Aleksandr Novototskiy-Vlasov and Vladimir Moiseenko. It was produced by Dmitry Lesnevsky through Ren Film. Konstantin Lavronenko plays the father, with Vladimir Garin and Ivan Dobronravov as his sons Andrey and Ivan, and Nataliya Vdovina as their mother. The film is the first in a run of features that continues with The Banishment, Leviathan, Loveless and Minotaur.

Released in 2003, the film took in about 4 million dollars worldwide. On IMDb it holds a rating of 7.9 from roughly 49,000 votes, while on TMDB it has a 7.3 from a much smaller number of votes, and it holds a critics' rating of 8.2 from 88 reviews. The pattern suggests a film that critics rate somewhat more highly than general audiences do, though both groups respond positively to it.