- year : 2023
- country : Russia
- timing : 29:31'
- genre : fiction film
written and directed by Vera Vasileva
produced by Polina Kozachenko, Arsel Uzak
DoP Elizaveta Voloshina
music by Alexey Shade
sound by Arseniy Pliev
editor Vera Vasileva
production designer Alexandra-Maria Bashirova
cast: Marina Mashinskaya, Sergey Udovik, Alexander Mizev, Arsel Uzak, Alexander Kovrizhnykh
Lena works as a car mechanic, tries to talk her father Victor into a healthy lifestyle. Everything goes well on until Victor gives her a present in the form of a suicide note on New Year's Eve 2020.
- Moscow International Film Festival (2023, Russia, Moscow)
- Pune Short Film Festival (2023, India, Pune)
- Short film festival VOTE TO FILM (2023, Russia, Crimea)
- Street Film Festival (2023, Russia)
- All-Russian Shukshin Film Festival (2023, Russia, Barnaul, Srostki)
- Open film festival “Kinoshock” (2023, Russia, Anapa)
- Shnit Worldwide Shortfilmfestival (2023, Russia, Moscow)
- Student International Film Festival (2023, Croatia, Rijeka)
- International Film Festival of spiritual, moral and family films "St. Vladimir" (2023, Russia, Sevastopol)
- International Open Youth Festival of TV Programs and Films “Telemania” (2023, Russia, Moscow)
- Youth Short Film Festival “Hazelnut”, Special Jury Prize (2024, Russia, Moscow)
Director’s statement
It all started with the fact that on December 30th 2019, my best friend Lena came to me and said: “It’s all so messed up!” I asked her to tell me what happened.
We stood on my balcony, talking. Lena smoked one cigarette after another and haltingly, still trying to cope with the shock, told me that this morning her father called her and asked her to drive him to the grocery store. Lena, knowing her father, immediately felt some kind of catch and was not mistaken: during this trip, he told her that he had left a suicide note on his desk and that she should not touch it, because then her fingerprints would remain on the envelope. He explained his act by saying that he considered it the right decision for everyone, since he had been terminally ill with pulmonary fibrosis for many years, and it was better now to save Lena and his loved ones from the painful obligation of caring for him. As the saying goes, there’s no reason to expect fair weather from the sea.
“I said that I don’t have money for his funeral, and in general, today is December 30th, everything will be closed, but you need a lot of paperwork for the morgue, for this and that…”, Lena said. She said this not because she really thought about it, but because she knew that it was these dry, prosaic and logical arguments that her father, a former truck driver, an Afghan veteran who had experienced all possible emotional upheavals in his lifetime, would understand, accept and will not carry out the plan. And so it happened. But at that moment, when we were standing on the balcony, we did not know the future and tried to somehow comprehend and survive this terrible situation and decided to make this film.
In this very real situation, I perceived Anton Chekhov's intonation, the paradox, the inconsistency of words, thoughts and actions, which was always interesting to me, and, taking this short episode of the document of life as a basis, I decided to surround it with fiction, which, however, is also a mosaic of documentary observations of oneself and others.
The main theme of my film is death, but not as an independent phenomenon, but as just a part of life, death as a pencil, which shows on a white sheet the drawing of life and the drawing of love.
My main goal in the implementation of this idea, I set the use of artistic convention as a tool that creates and emphasizes plausibility. Most of all, I avoided deliberateness, tragic pathos and obsessive conventionality, bordering on surrealism. Through the simplicity and even asceticism of form, I tried to reveal the complexity of the seemingly ordinary relationship between a father and an adult daughter. Through recognition and banality, through the quest for originality, but at the same time - in our earnest yearning to avoid clichés as much as possible.
ABOUT THE FILM DIRECTOR:
Vera Vasileva was born on 20.07.1991 in Mytishchi, Moscow Region. In 2014 graduated from the Gnessin State Musical College. Majoring in electric guitar, toured with her band. In 2021 graduated from the Russian State University of Cinematography (VGIK) (A.A. Eshpai's workshop). She participated as a director in the filming of the series "Friendzone" for START platform, as a composer she wrote music for several full-length films, worked on television, was elected chairman of the student jury at the 42nd VGIK International Student Festival. Currently working on the launch of a full-length debut based on her own script.
FILMOGRAPHY:
2023 - "Red, Yellow, Green", short student film \ diploma
2022 - "Friendzone", TV Series
2021 - "It's All Wrong with Me", short film
2020 – "Mitya’s Love", short film
2019 - "Dream.Summer.Night", short film
