The most celebrated film of last year was Boyhood, a 12-years-in-the-making coming-of-age narrative feature about a middle-class boy in Texas. In far-off Moscow, filmmaker Hanna Polak was engaged in an even more committed, perilous project, following a girl named Yula from ages 10 to 24 as she lived in a massive landfill just outside the city. Finally completed in the hours prior to T/F, Something captures a real adolescence lived at the extreme margins. Polak artfully contextualizes Yula’s story amid those who didn’t quite make it in Putin’s Russia. Not interested in wallowing in misery, the film instead captures the authentic rhythms of a difficult life filled with music, animals, and the universal touchstones of adolescence. (DS)