Incense-Navigator

Find out how to make the best incense and get it to where it's needed most: with this assignment, director Alexander Kuprin and his old friend Hierodeacon Zacchaeus, who's now a monk, jump into a car. They excitedly admit that the incense is really just an excuse—what matters is the trip and the people they meet along the way. Their odyssey takes them from Russia to the monastic state of Mount Athos in Greece and back again to the fighting in East Ukraine. It's a road movie in a free, associative form that refers in passing to Easy Rider and Godard’s Pierrot le fou. It's also a journey through the melancholy memories of their own hippie pasts that takes them into the raw reality of the Donbass region of Ukraine, a war zone typified by Orthodox religion. This is the destination for the incense, and here they talk to civilians, members of local militia and the nuns in a convent that became entangled in the conflict. Incense-Navigator is an intuitive exploration that touches on such existential themes as war and peace, though not without a dash of lightheartedness.