The Upper Reaches

The death of Alina's father changed her mother and both of her grandmothers. Her mother isolated herself from the world, grandmother Iza is overly protective of Alina, while grandmother Taya does not communicate with her granddaughter at all. After her second year at university, Alina goes to the village on the Pinega River, where her grandmother Taya lives and where her father died many years ago. Alina tries to understand what happened to her family back then and why the strange old neighbor believes that Alina can save her from the creature that settled in her body when she was a child. Tina is studying in graduate school at the Faculty of Philology and writing a dissertation about a mythical creature that inhabits women living in villages in northern Russia, where the Pinega River flows. Tina immerses herself in the dark history and mythology of Pinezhye, while simultaneously experiencing a painful relationship with her married academic supervisor, hardly leaving her rented studio on the outskirts of St. Petersburg.