This time, the character I have chosen cannot really be described as a heroine. Rather, she is more of an anti-heroine. Tanya Serebryakova is the protagonist of a 1988 Soviet film directed by Isaac Fridberg, called Kukolka (translated, amongst other things, as Dolly in English). She is a talented young Russian gymnast, competing at the highest international level, but she suffers a serious back injury at the peak of her career, cruelly cutting it short. With no prospect of bringing further glory to her homeland, she is ignominiously shunted back to the town which she came from, with the expectation that she will simply return to being a normal high school girl. But years of almost military-like training have made the stubborn Tanya a cold, confrontational individual and this inevitably leads to tragedy. Continue reading →