"We are the first generation of parents whose children have new brains"

Interview with director Alice Khazanova, who shot the film “White List” about teenage “Death Groups”

At Russian streaming, the new film by Alice Khazanova according to the script of Roman Volobuev “White List” was released. In the title role - Alexey Serebryakov. This is a criminal drama about a series of teenage suicides in Podolsk. The plot is based on the stories of “death groups”, the most famous of which is the semi -mythical “blue whale”. Olga Shakina talked with Khazanova about the film as a director and as with her mother - about the abyss between generations and difficulties in education.

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After the White List, it turned out that you can be an excellent director of genre cinema. Did you suspect this to yourself?

- History dictates the form. Such a story as a “white list”, shooting outside the genre is to tighten the audience into a gloomy swamp through which it is impossible to build a dialogue.

I try to give stories what she deserves. And, of course, this will be impudently sounded on my part, but I would like to do stylistically different things as a director.

Here is my first film, “Shards” ( a non-linearly told story about the parting spouses and memory tricks, the free remake of the film explosion Alena Rene “last year in Marienbad.”-Approx. “Cold” ), was completely different, there was a story “Something someone dreamed”: what was caught from the air-they were taken away.

Well, yes, it would be strange “last summer in Marienbad” to make a detective with the scums.

- You won’t believe it, there were such proposals from producers: to remove as a detective. I sat, looked stupidly at one point, because I realized that it would be completely indecent. At the same time, from a production point of view, she understood why people say this to me. In the end, we took off the “fragments” with other producers.

That is, in the case of a “white list”, the form of a detective or a policeman has been procedureing - so that people would be clearer?

- This is an attempt to build a dialogue on an important topic. At the same time, we still understand that this is “the film is not for everyone”: there are many dialogues, many questions that are not given answers, so to speak, a gloomy atmosphere. That is, the usual set for "What did you make such a sad movie?"

The topic itself [teenage suicides] already requires the audience of great internal work. Roma ( screenwriter of the film Roman Volobuev. - Approx. "Cold" ) says that I am an idealist. But I am also a parent, and, however, it seems important to me to say some things so that a person has questions to himself, to relationships, sorry, with his own children.

You yourself have a daughter. And in the film - we are talking about girlish suicides. Is there any of your fears?

- Here we need to talk with doctors ( laughs ). I really consulted a lot with psychologists, with psychiatrists. At the stage of teenage growing up, the psyche is as mobile as possible and a lot of pressure about everything related to appearance. All the problems that women are talking about especially loudly today begin when these women are still children.

What do you mean?

- Stereotypes. When women are dictated, how to look, how to behave, what place to occupy in society. Well, the whole set. And it is quite difficult for a teenage girl to understand that this coordinate system is also spreading to her. And around at the same time - so much indifference. It is it, as we know, and kills.

And then the moment came when Roman Olegovich and I understood ... can I be obscene?

Need to!

- We realized that fucked up, how important it is to write and remove about it. This was a clear feeling.

We are really the first generation of parents who generally faced the fact that our children have new, other brains, other extensions. They live on the Internet, unlike us, old -school. We do not catch up with what is happening to them, and we have no tools to understand. Nobody gave us any training manual, and everyone makes big eyes and begin to say some banal things. And this does not help, cannot help.

It is always important to understand the logic of what is happening to the child. And you understand that it is absolutely powerless: all your skills are not suitable. And that there are a lot of people like you. And in your children, classmates still fall into some situations there, and all this [described in articles about “blue whales”]-it is in the air.

Girls in your film are 14-15 years old. Can you compare yourself with them at their age? I remember you told how you studied at a ballet school, you were sitting there on a diet from grapefruits and cigarettes.

- Yes, I was engaged in ballet, I lived with this. This is a closed system: every day you only think about how to make yourself better. That is, of course, everything was difficult with us, but it was different.

Today, an important factor is simply the amount of information that comes into the head. I'm not about the fact that the Internet is evil, but this is what the human psyche had to cope with. And our children were the first to fall into, without any adaptation. No one explained anything to them. Simply - here, please, use what you want, here you are, the fifth, tenth. And simply physically, it seems to me that the human brain was not very adapted to this.

Therefore, yes: it was difficult for us, but it was completely different. And from your bell tower to say: “Think about what difficulties they have,” it is impossible. Because it is a completely different order of complexity. They just got into the experiment: it was generally not clear whether the human psyche will cope with such an amount of information or not. I will not even give statistics about how the number of depressed episodes has grown over the past 10 years - there are other organizations for this.

Lord, even an adult cannot cope with all these triggers, constantly everything in phones. Too much around everything - and the world today has inflamed brains, it seems to me from this.

Imagine that you would have an iPhone in this closed ballet school. Would it be easier for you to live or harder?

- I can't imagine at all.

Well, here you are inside a closed tough system, but there is something like windows in a huge world where people with the same problems live. And through this window you can find out that there are disorders of food behavior, bulimia. That is, in the fact that you consider yourself a monster without losing weight by half a kilo, it’s not you who are to blame, but those who make you think so about yourself.

- Well, yes, probably the Internet can give more awareness that the world does not close in four walls. But, honestly, in the ballet school, all physically there is no time for this. You are busy all the time, and when you are not busy, you are very tired, and the only thing you want is to eat and sleep (well, if you do not need to stumble the pointe). But we have to ask the guys who study today. That would be interesting.

You have three daughters, right? That is, you could trace, so to speak, by different stages of dijitalization of heads.

- I have two daughters. There is still the eldest, stepdaughter. She is also my child, but I probably like her, like an older sister. I was lucky with the children, they are so very good.

Can you formulate any rules, how to do with them at all?

- Give instructions? I don’t know how, I am embarrassed. The only thing that helps me is the resource of boundless love that you open and open in yourself and which is definitely in any person. It is also important to understand that children, of course, were born to us, but they are individual people, not our hand or leg. And then I look at a wildly strange relationship in families and sometimes think: Lord, why do you need children at all.

Returning to the genre movie. Everyone already told you that you are the Russian -speaking David Fincher?

- Certainly! And also the Korean director, because in addition to the “zodiac”, of course, “Memories of the Murder” Pon Jun Ho come to everyone. Simply, as we already once said withRoman Olegovich [Volobuev], you can invent the original story, but then you come to the producers-and you need references. Without them, it is difficult to convey what you mean, because it sits inside your head. And people need to outline what they are signing for. And then there are Finhers, Koreans, the first season of the “real detective”. In general, a list of five positions is already hanging on the Internet. And I am such a person - I will not argue. So - it means so.

Where will you make the next movie? Not in Russia, apparently?

- No, there I, of course, is not ready there. How can I do this - on the remote, or what? I’ll try to shoot in another territory-in the end, I shot my first film in New York.

Do you know what the main ballet quality? Patience. You tolerate, tolerate, tolerate, it has already become patient that it is time to finish it - but patience does not end. And this quality is very valuable for the filmmaker.

And what will you shoot further?

“I have already come up with something of mine until I say that.”

Not like your first two films?

- completely different. But if tomorrow I am offered to make a good genre movie, I will say: “Of course, yes, thank you very much, let's work with your material.”

Could you shoot a comedy?

- Of course, why not? I have, so to speak, heredity ( Alice’s father is one of the main Soviet comedians, Gennady Khazanov. - approx. “Cold” ). For example, Roman Olegovich believes that I shot comedy scenes in the White List.

They say that comedians in life, as a rule, are rather gloomy people. You probably know about this from personal experience.

- This is a serious and hard, gloomy job to do ridiculous. At the same time, it is not funny to you at the same time. The attitude of the [comedian] cannot but be joyless - after all, he works with the imperfections of the world. And from this there is a moment of some longing.