LLC METRAFILMS
Convenience Store presents a bleak look at the difficult lives of Kazakh and Uzbek immigrants who are forced to perform illegal labor in Russia.
Directed by: Michael Borodin
Year: 2022
Country: Russia, Slovenia, Turkey
Length: 106 minutes
Mukhabbat (Zukhara Sanzysbay) is an immigrant from Uzbekistan. Now living in Russia, she’s forced to work in a convenience store in Moscow to make ends meet. Mukhabbat has a rough time working at the store. When she’s not harassed by customers; discriminated against for her ethnicity, she’s verbally and physically abused by her boss. Whenever Mukhabbat and her fellow immigrant colleagues do something that evil boss Zhanna (Lyudmila Vasilyeva) isn’t pleased with, they get beaten up. All this, while being paid nothing for their labour. Zhanna promises her employee that she will get her own store once she gets a baby. However, when Mukhabbat gives birth to a son, her baby is stolen from her. This is when Mukhabbat, after a long period, decides to fight for her freedom, only to be sent back to Uzbekistan. Without her baby.
Uzbek director Michael Borodin shows the way immigrant workers get treated by not only Russian individuals and opportunists, but by the entire system. Coming to a new country under false terms, being promised a better life and ending up having everything taken away from you. It overcomes the characters in Convenience Store. But what can they do? If they speak up about it and press charges, they’ll be the ones who get targeted by authorities for not being ‘legal’. It’s a messed up cycle and Borodin highlights this by focusing on the stoicism these characters show, even when subjected to brutal attacks.
The cinematography, the way this film was shot and lighted, is among the greatest we’ve seen so far this decade. During the first half of the film, while we’re in the convenience store, the neon lights are overbearing. It gives an indication of what it must feel like standing in this store day in, day out. Even when outside of the store, the character is haunted by these neon lights, almost swallowing her.
The story of Mukhabbat is inspired by a real-life incident. In the early 2000’s a woman was arrested for keeping her employees in her grocery store and forcing them to work for her, unpaid. Just like Mukhabbat, the enslaved workers were all immigrants. Within two years, the woman was pardoned by presidential decree, even though her family had owned three stores where people were enslaved in similar situations. The workers were brought to Russia and were promised a well-paid job. Then upon their arrival, they had their documents taken from them, placing them in a position where they were forced to do whatever their boss asked from them. They had worked here for ten years. One of the most infuriating aspects of this situation is that the police was complicit. The store has reopened since and is still owned by the same family.
Borodin’s voice is rightfully angry in this film that finally, after all these years, exposes the practices immigrants are subjected to. The director, who himself immigrated from Uzbekistan to Russia at the age of twenty-two, feels a strong connection to this story. Upon his arrival arrived in Russia, he experienced his rights being taken away too. Hopefully this important work will open the eyes of many, especially in Russia, and make sure the people who have been so cruel will finally be held accountable.
Convenience Store premiered at the 2022 Berlinale Film Festival, where it screened as part of the Panorama selection.
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