AllMovie

April 1, 1989, 50-year-old Russian-born Leonid Loktev, a Colorado computer-program analyst, was crossing the road between garage sales when he was struck by a car, receiving a traumatic brain injury that left him unable to execute simple tasks. Eight years later, Leonid's daughter, filmmaker Julia Loktev, went home to Colorado to document and discover the lives of her parents since the accident, recording the daily household routines of Larisa Loktev -- a wife, mother, and former program analyst who gave up her career to care for her husband after removing him from a nursing home. As the day begins, Larisa wakes Leonid, gets him out of bed to the accompaniment of up-tempo sounds from the stereo, and dresses him. Larisa makes cheerful conversation, but Leonid reacts mostly with a blank stare. Old photos reveal his vitality prior to the accident (seen in an impressionistic dramatized re-enactment). This is an unusual family portrait, captured without the intrusion of outside elements, since the filmmaker operated both camera and sound, even during late-night gabfests with her mother. Shot in Hi-8 video with a transfer to black-and-white film, the 115-minute documentary brought Julia Loktev a "Best Director" award at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival and was a selection of the 1998 New Directors/New Films series (MOMA/Film Society of Lincoln Center).