Unfinished commemoration

The film "Found a Sick on a Stone" - a diploma work, and director Anya Krais, who lives in Cologne, did not expect her painting to fall on Russian film festivals. But the film noticed: in Omsk at the Movement Festival, he received the main prize, and then was successfully shown in Moscow at the Opening festival in the program compiled by film critic Stas Tyrkin.

“Found a braid on a stone” - a film about Russia at the end of the 20th century, farewell to the nineties and beginning of the Putin era. 1999, the city of Ivanovo. Vika is going to Germany, and her fiancé arrived from the front to the commemoration of his brother who died at the front. The war, it seems, does not go in distant Chechnya, but right here, on the streets of the “City of weavers”, so Vika risks greatly, telling the companies of young Caucasians that her friend is fighting in Chechnya ... In the “Cruis of 200”, Alexei Balabanov showed the terrible decomposition of the Brezhnev USSR, and this film immediately recall the critics discussing the debt of Ani Krais. True, the heroes of Balabanov, leaving behind the dead Soviet monsters, remained in the new Russia, and Vika could get rid of the world of the dead and killers, only being in Germany.

The first question of Ana Krais is about the school in which she studied at Cologne, Kunsthochschule für medien.

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Anya Chrys in the program "Cultural Diary"

- This is a school of mass media arts. Focus on experimental and documentary cinema. There are also objects on the game cinema, but very few. For all the time of training, we had two or three seminars on the directing of the feature cinema, and we heard the name of Stanislavsky only at the very end of the 8th or 9th semester.

- Nevertheless, your gun shoots like at the Stanislavsky Theater.

Anya Krais with the main award of the Festival "Movement"

- Yes, these are probably Russian genes. According to scenario skill, I had a teacher from VGIK, she had a very specific approach to seminars on drama, she did not give us any rules, asked to write children's memories of parents, about herself, about some smells, about the city. As a result, a pack of these memories gathered for the fifth course. I did not know what kind of diploma should I do, she said: do a film about Ivanovo, you always wrote about it so interestingly. I thought: maybe something good will work out. So this film was born.

- When did you move to Germany?

- I'm not from Ivanovo, I'm from Kineshma, a real province. I studied in Ivanovo, received the first education - it was German and foreign literature. After training, we were offered to take a social year in Germany. I got to a school for children with disabilities. During this year, I decided, why don’t I try to take something off and go to study? I filed all five state-owned schools in Germany, and the experimental school took me, because cinematic schools needed more serious training, and I took it, I shot something black and white with a shaking camera ...

- That is, you gave your heroine Vika, who is going to Germany, the details of his story?

Everyone refused to play in this film

- Yes, all the heroes are written off from my family, even the names were preserved, except for Vika. I already thought, it’s somehow embarrassed to call yourself Anya there. The rest - mother Vera, Aunt Alya, Alexei, Anton - these are the names of my family. Honestly, I did not think that there would be a festival fate of the film, so I did not think to change these names. In general, it was very difficult with the actors, because everyone refused to play in this film. When all this was only on paper, humor is very difficult to read, it is a little on the verge-it seems to be humor, but it seems to be not, it can be and so expanded when setting. Therefore, the actors refused. Many actors came in three days before the start of filming, burst by accident.

- Anya, tell us about Ivanovo, about these years when Putin came, - what do you remember?

People no longer felt the murder as something terrible

- In 2000, I was 12 years old, so I did not particularly realize what happened around me. Somehow, these memories were populated internally. For me, this is still a happy childhood. Therefore, my film is partly dederamatic. If you notice, despite the fact that very unpleasant things are happening, they are not served from the perspective of tragedy, that is, it is as if the child is looking, does not perceive this time tragic or turning point.

- Of course, when your heroine meets the Chechens and they rape her nesting doll, another director could give it like a nightmare drama, and then Vika is alive and healthy - it was easily taken off, one might say.

- Consciousness at that time was so accustomed to horrors that people could not perceive these events tragically. Therefore, at the end of the film, everyone sits absolutely calmly with a corpse at the table. People no longer felt the murder as something terrible or out of the ordinary. Just a way with which they solve their problems.

Vika is in a hurry to surrender herself from the front to Anton in an abandoned carriage

- We can say that this is a film about the war. The Chechen war is far away, but affects the fate of people living in Ivanovo. You even perceived this war as what was happening nearby?

- No, I did not perceive. I do not remember that one of my cousins really served in hot spots. This all came to us only through television reports and, of course, from one point of view. But when later I studied in Ivanovo later, we have very developed national conflicts. Ivanovo is even called Yerevanovo because of immigrants from the Caucasus. There is this fear of them. I lived in a hostel for foreigners, and we had my own laws, that you can’t say that it is possible when they are missed, when others are not missed and so on. In principle, this story with rape happened in Ivanovo when I studied: this is probably 2010. She struck me. This story is not about violence, but about some breakdown in their minds.

- In fact, they raped a nesting doll?!

- Yes, it was. I heard this story in the hostel. I failed in the film that they opened some kind of store, but then I thought: it means that this man still found a nesting doll, I also thought about how to do it, I tracked down ... I decided to include this in the script.

- One of the main characters of your film is a TV, he reports that a new era is coming, Yeltsin is leaving, Putin comes, there is a war. How did you choose these personnel? And do you remember your relationship with the TV at that time?

I chose personnel to indicate Putin's coming

- My relationship with the TV, of course, was simpler. At 12, I was not particularly interested in news, more by series. And she spent time on the street, not in front of the TV. The TV in the film was important to show that the war was far away, two thousand kilometers from Ivanovo, but the echoes somehow reach. And I chose the frames to indicate Putin's coming. She chose, of course, based on the film genre, on the verge of comic and seriousness. All documentary inserts with ironic subtext - at least it was funny for me when I chose them.

- Your character says about Putin that he has a charm of a dried shark.

- This phrase was thrown to me by my teacher, who said that she has a Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper with this quote: “Now we have a president with the charm of a dried shark.” She brought this newspaper to me, showed it, I tried to find it in Russia, but not in the libraries of this number. But it exists. It was an absolutely normal quote of that time, it is not from any point in the opposition. In Russia, the film at festivals is going on without this scene, it was asked to cut out so that they would be given a rental certificate. Although in 2000 there was simply no Putin cult, so this is not even perceived as some criticism in his direction at that time.

- Is this the only scene that you have cut out?

They wrap the sausage in a newspaper with a portrait of Putin, they also asked to cut out. I say: no

- Yes. She was not forbidden by the Ministry of Culture, they just told me: if you put it in the Ministry of Culture, it is not to be turned away from sin so that you are not turned off, it is better to cut it out. And already festivals and days of Russian cinema, where they began to invite, they themselves decide: someone wants to leave this scene, someone does not want, someone is afraid, someone is not afraid. Everyone has different rules. There are state festivals, they, of course, do not want them to have such scenes. At the end, they wrapped sausage in a newspaper with a portrait of Putin, they also asked to cut out. I say: no, here I, sorry, will not cut it out. I can insert the pixels, but this will attract attention even more. And the rain TV channel was absolutely calmly using these shots. Festivals that are sponsored by the state are asked to remove this scene. I understand, of course, what a situation, so I’m going to meet, but I haven’t cut anything further yet, thank God.

Living and dead

- You have the most vile character is a drunkard who scolds Yeltsin and the collapse of the USSR. Actually, such will become Putin's support. Did you deliberate these remarks to this character?

- It seems to me that this character is taken from Russian literature. One of the critics correctly said: Karamazov’s motives. I imagined the disgusting Fedor Karamazov, who swears, all so vulgar. Somehow I subconsciously wanted to make this character like that. I did not connect him at all with Putin’s policy. A typical character who talks with the TV today he scolds Yeltsin, then he will scold Putin, because such a person. Dissatisfaction is a distinctive feature with us.

- We can say that this is a film about the commemoration ...

- The image of death is all around him. The commemoration of one family goes into commemoration of another family.

- I will not be original: the first thing that comes to mind is Balabanov, "Cargo 200". You probably already got this comparison?

- We did not get it. For me, this, of course, is a compliment. Because in principle, any director in his first film copies someone: Lars von Trier copied Tarkovsky ... Basically, everyone starts with imitation. I took the story of Anton's brother: Sergey Bodrov told this story in a documentary about how Brother-2 starred. He said that he received a letter from one woman, that her son was stolen by a motorcycle, her son is returning, she does not know what to do. "Danila, come, you dealt with them so well, and help me." He said that then we realized that we need to do “brother-2”, that this film is somewhat very important to people. I borrowed this story, a little to pull it out, as it was convenient for me. In the line of the two witnesses of Jehovah you can see the "Zhmurki". And the final scene is likely to the “Cargo 200”, because there the victim lies among the corpses, and I have a corpse among the living. Yes, I said to my operator: I want, as a “load 200” look like everything to be very simple, a single -haired one. We did not even have financial opportunities, only one and a half million rubles. I say: it was simple and so that it was terrible from the fact that this is just so deliberately removed.

Anton is not ready to come to terms with the fact that the bandit was taken away by the motorcycle of the deceased in Chechnya

- Who are your favorite directors? I saw on your Facebook that you dream of learning from Philip Grandrian.

“I would like to learn from him.” In Russia now, frankly, I would not want to study ... I do not, for example, have a desire to study with Sokurov, this is absolutely not my director. I respect him, I respect Zvyagintsev, all of our large masters, but it seems to me that they would either be difficult for me to learn or impossible in the sense that they are too classic. And the Grandrhee is a large experimenter. He could help find his voice. I saw three of his films, just one of the actors - Anton - I chose the film by Philip Grandrhey, Alexey Solonchev starred in Lake. I like his minimalism, the fact that he himself can act, he has few dialogs. He teaches to shoot for small budgets, which attracts very much in harsh Russian reality. If he succeeds in Russia in Russia, then he will be able to open non-standard thinking directors who will never open either Sokurov or VGIK, because they think very classically, and he thinks in European, experimentally. The Germans say "where the blood comes from", that is, they dig from the personal, take personal stories. And in Russia, they begin most often in VGIK, as far as I know, with film adaptations, that is, they take a literary basis and try to film it. This is the main difference.

- I see that you are already ready for plans, you received a grant for one picture, wrote a short film script ...

- I have two full meters, one is almost finished, the second I just started and got a grant. What will come of it, I don’t know, because while this is a scenario grant, you still need to write, find a production company, equip everything. In principle, it can turn out. And a short film, I would like to take off in the near future. I hope that it will turn out in November-December: I will dig up a little money, ahead, and there will be another cheerful black film about Russia today, however, time.

- Again about Russia, not about Germany?

- So far, my stories come about Russia. Probably, for some time it should pass for a person to be able to transform the events of his life into a movie history.