Director: Kirill Kemnits
A stray bear cub wanders into a struggling family's backyard and, almost by accident, starts putting their broken pieces back together.
What is I Am a Bear about?
The Kovalev household is barely holding itself together. The father, once captain of the local Taiga hockey team, is still recovering from an injury that ended his career, leaving his wife to manage a home that no longer runs the way it used to. Their teenage daughter is pulling away in the middle of an awkward, moody adolescence, and their younger son spends most days without a single friend his own age. Everything shifts when that son brings home an orphaned cub that wandered too close to the edge of town. The animal has nowhere else to go, and neither, in a way, does this family — so the two problems end up solving each other in ways nobody expected.
Cast & crew
Nikita Kologrivyy anchors the film as the injured father trying to find his footing again, with Agata Mutsenietse and Dmitrii Kalikhov playing the Kovalev children navigating very different kinds of growing up. Ekaterina Borisova plays the mother holding the household together, and Andrey Pynzaru, Mikhail Evlanov, Olga Tumaykina, and Irina Bezryadnova fill out a supporting cast of neighbors and townspeople whose reactions to a bear cub in a residential yard add much of the film's comedy.
Context & significance
Director Kirill Kemnits sets the story in a small town built around a hockey rink and a taiga forest pressing right up against the houses, using that setting to make the arrival of a wild animal feel plausible rather than like a plot device. Released in 2024, the Russian production leans on practical family drama — injury, financial strain, a child without friends — before letting the cub's presence turn those hard edges into something gentler and funnier.
Where & how to watch
I Am a Bear is available on K-Time with Persian dubbing, so younger viewers and families can watch the Kovalevs' story fully in Farsi. The film's page is free to read and browse without an account; streaming the movie itself only requires logging in. K-Time's interface and recommendations are built around a Farsi-speaking, Iranian diaspora audience.