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Letter

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Levél

Hollandia / Oroszország

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A remote village in the North-West of Russia. A mental asylum is located in an old wooden house. The place and its inhabitants seem tobe untouched by civilization.

In this pristine setting no articulate human voice is heard, and the pain is muted.

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT:

For 15 years I have travelled around Ukraine, Russia and Belarus making documentary films. I have been to remote places and I have witnessed decay, violence and despair.

Everywhere I went, I met people, who were eager to tell their stories.
There are millions of anonymous characters out there, subjected to cruelty and injustice, whose voices have never been heard and whose stories have never been told. Not much has changed in that land since the time when Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote in his “House of the Dead”, that “a Man is a creature who can get used to anything”.

I shot this footage in the mental asylum in Russia almost 10 years ago, and I kept it in my archive.

In “Halt”, “Portrait”, “Landscape”, “Artel” I look at a particular human condition All these films are without dialogue. I only used the atmospheric soundtrack to work with the image. In my new film, “Letter”, I am taking it a step further, and allowing the sound to “overpower” the image. And yet, the place itself forbids the sound of an articulate human voice, so I have to look for a different, deaf-mute sound, to define this space.

The film describes the land where people live as “prisoners of unconsciousness”.

Sergei Loznitsa

Major screenings:

International Film Festival Rotterdam 2013

EFA 2013 Best Short Film Nomination

Krakow International Film Festival 2013

Díjak:

Golden Dragon - Director of Best Film - Krakow IFF

Director

Sergei LOZNITSA

Script writer/Director

Sergei Loznitsa was born on September, 5th 1964 in Baranovichi (Belarus, former USSR). He grew up in Kiev, and in 1987 graduated from the Kiev Polytechnic with a degree in Applied Mathematics. In 1987-1991 he worked as a scientist at the Kiev Institute of Cybernetics, specializing in artificial intelligence research. He also worked as a translator from Japanese.
In 1997 he graduated from the Russian State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK), where he studied feature film making.

Sergei Loznitsa has been making documentary films since 1996, and he has directed 13 documentaries. He has received numerous international and national awards, including festival prizes in Karlovy Vary, Leipzig, Oberhausen, Paris, Madrid, Toronto, Jerusalem, St-Petersburg, as well as the Russian National Film awards “Nika” and “Laurel”. Sergei Loznitsa’s montage film “Blockade” (2005) is based on the archive footage of besieged Leningrad.

Loznitsa’s feature debut “MY JOY” (2010) premiered in the main competition of the Festival de Cannes. It was followed by a WWII drama «IN THE FOG”, which was screened in the competition of the 65th Festival de Cannes in 2012, and was awarded the FIPRESCI prize.

Sergei Loznitsa continues to work both in documentary and feature genres. He is currently working on a feature film project entitled “Babi yar”.

Filmography

- Today we are going to bulid a house (documentary film, 1996, 28 min., 35 mm, b/w, mono)

- Life, Autumn (documentary film, 1998, 34 min., 35 mm, b/w, mono)

- The Train Stop (documentary film, 2000, 25 min., 35 mm, b/w, mono)

- Settlement (documentary film, 2001, 80 min., 35 mm, b/w, mono)

- Portrait (documentary film, 2002, 28 min., 35 mm, b/w, mono)

- Landscape (documentary film, 2003, 60 min., 35 mm, color, mono)

- Factory (documentary film, 2004, 30 min., 35 mm, color, dolby digital)

- Blockade (documentary film, 2005, 52 min., 35 mm, b/w, stereo)

- Artel (documentary film, 2006, 30 min., 35 mm, b/w, stereo)

- Revue (documentary film, 2008, 83 min., 35 mm, b/w, dolby digital 5.1)