The upper echelons of this year’s edition of Cannes Film Festival had a significant Russian-language presence, with three films in the official selection. And while Andrei Zvyagintsev (with Loveless) and Sergei Loznitsa (with A Gentle Creature) are familiar arthouse names, it was newcomer Kantemir Balagov who made a stir with his debut feature, Closeness, winning the prestigious FIPRESCI award and being hailed as the festival’s biggest surprise by many reviewers. The low-budget coming-of-age drama, which opened in Russia last week, is set in Kabardino-Balkaria, a small republic in the Russian North Caucasus rarely — if ever — seen on screen. The young protagonist, a tomboy named Ilana, lives with her Jewish family in Nalchik, where her people are a tiny minority; she secretly dates a Kabardian man while working at her father’s auto repair shop. The drama is set in motion when Ilana’s brother is kidnapped for ransom that the family cannot pay even with help from the Jewish community.

As Balagov himself asserts, while not based on any particular events, the film is inspired by his experiences growing up in Kabardino-Balkaria in the 1990s. “It is nostalgia of course, but I think very dearly of that time,” says the director when I ask him why he decided to set the film in 1998. “It has a romantic appeal to me — despite the terrible things that were happening, not just in Nalchik but throughout the country.” Balagov’s is an unusual approach in Russia, where the era is usually seen in a negative light; for the 26-year-old director, though, these are childhood memories. Getting a Cannes spot at such a young age is incredibly rare, and Balagov’s is not a privileged background. A few years ago, he was studying accounting and making amateur web series with his friends — until he was invited by the celebrated director Alexander Sokurov to join his filmmaking class at the Kabardino-Balkarian University.