Leviathan is a 2014 Russian film that is among the 83 submissions for the 2015 Best Foreign Language Academy Award.

The film unflinchingly tackles the myriad social issues facing modern day Russia, as the film’s protagonist Kolia (Alexeï Serebriakov) fights the might of the local mayor.

Kolia minds his own business in the small town where he lives with his wife Lilya (Elena Lyadova) and son Roma (Sergey Pokhodaev).

He runs an autorepair shop, which local mayor Vadim Shelevyat (Roman Madianov) wants to appropriate together with Kolia’s house and land.

When traditional bribing methods fail, Shelevyat’s approaches become more aggressive.

The film unflinchingly tackles the myriad social issues facing modern day Russia

Since its debut in Cannes last May, where it won the award for Best Screenplay, numerous film critics have praised this film to high heaven.

“Leviathan is a tragic drama, compelling in its moral seriousness, with a severity and force that escalate into a terrible, annihilating sort of grandeur,” says Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian, going on to name it one of his Top 10 films of 2014.

Director Andrey Zvyagintsev sees his film as an ode to his country, stating in the film’s production notes that “if my film is rooted in the Russian land, it is only because I feel no kinship, no genetic link with anything else”.

The film is a strong reflection on the ‘state’ and its power over individual citizens; with the central character based on the trials of the biblical figure Job, a prosperous family man who loses all he holds dear.

Thus the leviathan of the title. The film is also inspired by the book of the same name by 17th-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes, as Zvyagintsev goes on to explain in his director’s note.

“When a man feels the tight grip of anxiety in the face of need and uncertainty, when he gets overwhelmed with hazy images of the future, scared for his loved ones, and fearful of death on the prowl, what can he do except give up his freedom and free will and hand these treasures over willingly to a trustworthy person in exchange for deceptive guarantees of security, social protection, or even of an illusory community?”

For it is this tenuous link, this desire to give up personal freedom for a sense of security, that lies at the heart of this film.

Judging by the universal critical acclaim heaped upon it , not only is Leviathan bound to be short-listed to the final five in the Best Foreign Language Oscar category, but it could very well be the winner on February 22.