AllMovie

An abandoned Russian child forsakes a life of luxury in the name of finding his true mother in director Andrei Kravchuk's affecting drama. Vanya is a six-year-old boy who is about to be adopted by a loving Italian couple, but this is a crucial moment in his life, and there are choices to be made. Will Vanya be content to simply spend his days basking in the warmth of the Mediterranean sun, or will his desire to know his true mother slowly eat away at him from the inside for the rest of his life? Though he eventually decides that in order to move on with his life he must first seek out his birth mother, Vanya must learn to read the file containing the information he will need to locate her. As Vanya sets out on the ultimate journey of self-discovery, he is about to find out that the world of children is a universe unto itself, a universe where the longings of the heart often overpower the ability to reason.