In a few brief moments in the life of a young girl, we see her drawing on the window with a marker as she sings and chats, and walking along the main road on her way to meet her friend, meanwhile surrounded by cars and trucks racing dangerously close to her.
Women who have lost their husbands and sons in Russia's full-scale war against Ukraine find themselves mourning in the Carpathian Mountains. Yet, the stunning landscapes cannot fill the unbearable void left by their loss. Still, Tamara, Liubov, and Svitlana learn to live with their unhealed wounds through poetry, sisterhood, and deep conversation. At a certain point, the once-silent nature finds its voice, joining the women in their grief.
In her autobiographical documentary, the young director uses cartoon impressions, photographic memories, and the various stages of baking a cake to draw the viewer into her own stream of consciousness, and using images full of kindness, tenderness, and playfulness, she deals with the sadness that began during a children's birthday party many years ago.
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, many Russians have started having dreams about their president and sharing them on social media. More than a thousand dreams about Putin have now been recorded and posted on public platforms. In Dreams About Putin, a selection of these dreams have been brought to life using Unreal Engine, a 3D graphics program for creating scenes for computer games. In this exciting experiment with form, the animations are complemented by rare archival footage of the Russian president. The dreams are related by a narrator, and their “translation” into 3D scenes is not literal; likewise, the archival footage has been lightly edited. The result is sometimes dryly comic, sometimes absurdist, sometimes disturbing, and sometimes even hopeful. A series of bizarre but therefore oddly familiar nightmares as a vision of Putin’s Russia.
Through monotony of daily realities, we see Sandra, a mother of two, raising her children with a frequently absent father. The satirical representation of her conventional familial life leaves us with questions about her personal desires.
