»I remember how shocked I was when I read an essay written by Anton, my future hero: ›people‹, I read it over and over, and suddenly I understood that some words were repeated at almost equal intervals: ›people endure‹, ›people don’t endure‹, ›people will endure‹. And in the end: ›People are finite. People fly‹. I thought then that that was a model of real human life. We tried to find a way out of an utterly hopeless situation our hero found himself in – and the solution took four years to find. We were filming everything that took place in those four years.«
– Lyubov Arkus

Anton is autistic and lives with his sick mother in a downtrodden flat on the outskirts of a large city in Russia. He’s a boy with an inquisitive look and a disarming smile. Yet winning his trust is a challenge as big as it is for him to come to terms with the non-autistic world.
While Anton’s mother is battling with the final stages of cancer, the director of the film, Lyubov Arkus, and her film crew are gradually drawn into the boy’s life. Things then get better when he is accepted for the only programme in Russia that teaches basic social skills to people with autism. Indeed, he makes progress – especially under the aegis of David, his supervisor. But eventually David leaves, the mother dies and Anton is threatened with admission into an overcrowded and understaffed psychiatric clinic.
Lyobov Arkus’s film debut is also the chronicle of her relationship with Anton. Increasingly, visibly, Ms Arkus lessens the distance between director, camera and protagonist as she herself becomes a part of Anton’s life.

Awards for ›Anton Tut Ryadom‹
Best First Documentary, Middle East International Film Festival MEIFF 2012 | Special Prize, International Human Rights Film Festival 2012 | Novaya Gazeta Award, International Human Rights Film Festival 2012 | Best Author Documentary, National Documentary Awards: Laurel, Russia 2012 | Prize Miron Cherenko, Annual Award of the Guild of Historians of Cinema and Film Critics 2012

Film programme An Excess of Order