The Blue Parts

Water. Salt. Tomatoes. Sort VHS tapes alphabetically. More water.

In Brighton Beach there’s a lot for Marina to worry about—sparse sales, careless customers, the storm brewing just outside, and the ocean of impossibility of reconciling your past with your present—and on days like today, you have to pick just one.

That’s what she tells Abdur, a passionate teenager who shows up with a petition to Save The Whales, while she and Masha are busy putting down sandbags and boarding up Brighton Video’s windows for the coming storm. As the downpour worsens, the three of them are trapped inside together and have to learn to swim the gulf between them, vast and alive as the Atlantic Ocean. Written by Liba Vaynberg and directed by Lee Sunday Evans, The Blue Parts is a familiar and singular story about what it means to leave the places we call home.