Projects of the Finalists of the Artdocfest / Riga Pitch Session 2023
Supported
Someone else's war
Producer center Ak Too (Kyrgyzstan)
Director Ksenia Okhapkina, Daniel Berger, Producer Daniel Berger

We are observing several families in Kyrgyzstan who have lost loved ones. How do they deal with their pain? Where do they find the strength to live? People of different nationalities, customs and lifestyle are united by a common feeling - the experience of grief.

Supported
Senator's daughter
Ekaterina Mamontova
Director Ekaterina Mamontova, Producer Production23

Senator Eduard Isakov signed a document on the introduction of troops into Ukraine. His daughter Diana went on a picket against the war and was detained by the police. Her father kicked Diana out of the house and promised to put her in jail if she continued her activist activities. Diana leaves the country and comes up with a plan to save Russia through the Power of Love, while her father continues to actively support the war effort.

Released
The Shards
Masha Chernaya
Director Masha Chernaya

The mosaic chronicles farewells and a journey to the “underground” with a camera and mother’s coffin. Series about angry young women and men in an angry country.

Supported
Tower, Sun and The Seven of Wands
Marx Film (Estonia)
Director Tanya Vikhreva, Producer Maria Gavrilova

Lena, the groomer, granny Irina and Tonya, the witch. Three women are choosing to stay or to flee from the wartime Crimea. But their decisions are influenced both by propaganda and by Tarot cards.

Released
Our summer
Vitaly Akimov (France)
Director Vitaly Akimov

Black and white drama about youth in Moscow. The guys arrange concerts in abandoned buildings, hold illegal boxing fights, go to nature and still do not know how this summer will end.

Supported
Shchastya
17+4, Dmitry Kubasov (Turkey)
Director Dmitry Kubasov, Anastasia Murashkina

In 2014, nine-year-old girl Lada and her mother Inna flee the fighting in Eastern Ukraine. They leave their hometown of Shchastya for Moscow, Russia, only to face poverty, exhausting immigration bureaucracy, and risk of homelessness. Inna dreams of Russian citizenship, a husband, and another child. There’s no room for Lada in her life plan. Moreover, it feels like Inna believes in Vladimir Putin more than her own daughter. However, things change after February 24, 2022, and now Inna is to meet a new version of Lada.

Released
K’nerek (Bon Voyage)
Tanya Bazhenova (Armenia)
Director Tanya Bazhenova, Producer Eduard Lukoianov

They say that "after February 24" the lives of thousands of Russians have changed dramatically. But is it so? The heroes of Tanya Bazhenova's film discover that in reality only the scenery has changed for them. Fear, loneliness, disunity — they took it all with them. "Bon Voyage" is not a criticism of expats and not a satire on them, but a human document, sad and funny, like a "new life" of people caught in the camera lens.

Supported
Factory of happy people
Yana Osman
Director Yana Osman, Anton Khamchishkin

Parks of culture and leisure are a phenomenon of Soviet culture, unlike European city parks, which mostly acted as places of recreation, the Soviet park of culture had a specific purpose - a mission to educate a «new soviet man». How has the Park of Culture and Leisure changed us over the past 100 years?

Released
With My Open Lungs
Yana Sad (Germany)
Director Yana Sad

Yana films the beginning of a relationship with her girlfriend Yaroslava. They observe the changing reality in St Petersburg since the war in Ukraine started, and want to leave Russia. Accidentally Yaroslava was discovered to have cancer, which prevented them from moving. Cancer plunges them into a dragging world without day and night, but with the dates through the hospital doors, IVs, intimate dreams, and sex through injections, coughing and nausea.

Released
A Personal Receiving
Nerpa film
Director Elizaveta Stishova

The film was filmed at the Roizman Foundation during the first month of the war. This is an observation film, a film that shows how people reacted at the beginning of the war and what problems they had and how they coped with them.