Set in a country that continues to struggle to find its footing, director Andrei Kravchuk’s new film “The Italian” shows how hope can sometimes seem like a dangerous obsession.

“The Italian” follows the despair of one young boy in a provincial Russian orphanage who has a rare opportunity to escape the drudgery of life there, but instead finds himself trading it all for a chance to meet his birth mother.

As the film opens, 6-year-old Vanya, played with poignant determination by Kolya Spiridonov, is plucked from the crowd of orphans by a childless Italian couple. His good luck draws the envy of his peers and earns him the nickname “The Italian.” But while he waits for the paperwork (and payment) to go through, Vanya meets a desperate woman who has come to the orphanage to reclaim her son, only to find that he has already been adopted. Unable to shake the anguished woman from his thoughts, Vanya begins to obsess over his own birth mother rather than appreciate his good fortune. Through pluck, determination, and a bit of foolhardiness, the fearless little boy begins a dogged search to find her.

He teaches himself to read so he can understand his file, breaks into the headmaster’s office, and earns a beating from an adolescent gang leader. But that’s all before he begins the real search for his mother — running away from the orphanage, the 6-year-old is forced to take public transportation on his own, wanders the streets with no money, and gets into numerous potentially lethal fights.

Through all of this, Mr. Spiridonov imbues Vanya with heart, resolve, and bravery. But while his character is the resolute core of the film, Mr. Kravchuk has composed a group of actors and nonprofessionals who bring a human element to the complex issue of illegal adoption in Russia. Though it is hard to understand how people can seek to profit from the sale of small children, “The Italian” shows the practical decisions people make in a world of limited options.

Filming in a working orphanage with the children who live there, Mr. Kravchuk paints a charming but spare picture of these children’s lives. The brutal beauty evoked by the wintry Russian countryside serves to magnify the meager existence they eke out.

The youngest children in the orphanage are stuck between the regulations of the adults who monitor them and the whims of the older children who run a thriving black market on the premises. They all hope that a loving couple will whisk them off to a fairy tale life, but they must acknowledge that they may remain to become one of the hardened teenagers who terrorize them, or worse yet, that their adoptive parents will sell them into slavery or abuse them.

So when Vanya is chosen to live a dream life in Italy, he earns the envy of his peers and becomes an important commodity for the adults who run the orphanage. Running off in search of his mother, he earns their scorn. But no one in the film becomes a shallow villain. Each character is making do with the cards he has been dealt — making Vanya’s quest all the more unusual.

And unlike our youthful American chase films like “Annie” and “Home Alone,” there are real-world consequences hanging over Vanya’s choices. Despite the boy’s near limitless street skills and dogged focus, it is sometimes difficult to root for Vanya in his quest. While the adoption broker (Ariya Kuznetsova) and her henchman (Nikolai Reutov) chase after Vanya to protect their investment, they may also be able to protect him. Yet through it all, little Vanya’s determination is painfully admirable.

As Vanya carelessly throws away his chance for a happy life, his quest is sometimes hard to watch. Practically, there is not much to suggest that he is doing the right thing. But on the off chance that he succeeds, his perseverance contains more than a little of the heroic.

mkeane@nysun.com