38th edition 2023 short & midlength films
Empty Rooms
Zhenia Kazankina
After 24th February 2022, many people emigrated from Russia for various reasons. Among these people were my closed ones. In April, when I was completely alone in Moscow, I made a film about it. This film is my love letter to those people who can no longer be near me.
Zhenia Kazankina graduated from the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography (VGIK). Her work explores coming of age, loneliness, and attachment. Her previous films, Rio (2019) and Continuity of Parks (2022), got significant attention in many international film festivals (New Directors/New Films, Palm Springs, Vila do Conde).
- Photographie
- Luda KUROPIATNIKOVA
- Son
- Pavel AMBARNOV
- Montage
- Zhenia KAZANKINA
- Production
- Stereotactic
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A word from the selection committee :
It just takes Zhenia Kazankina a few minutes (five to be precise) to convey a whole world: the one inhabited by her close ones, which looks so familiar, yet, stripped of human presence, adorn itself with a veil of sadness.
By looking for traces of loved ones the film becomes both invocation and evocation, the apparatus lightness is suddenly confronted with present times heaviness.
And in the film grain and the way light permeates it, we could almost believe that the filmmaker is looking for spectral traces of her lost ones.
- Victor Bournerias