Film Screening: Shelter Kingdom

Tatyana Rakhmanova’s teenage drama about fragile and reckless kids won the Best Debut and Best Cinematography awards at the Mayak Film Festival.

Shelter Kingdom follows a group of kids who have just left an orphanage, or «bator, ” as the they call it (short for «incubator»), during their first days of independent life. They want to celebrate this long-awaited event and use their allowances to rent a cottage, which for one evening becomes their kingdom. With a candlelight dinner, sequins, fancy outfits, music, alcohol, and even a white rabbit, a festive mood and euphoria fill the air. When morning comes the teenagers, lost between fantasy and reality, don’t know how to stop.

In Tatyana Rakhmanova’s Shelter Kingdom there is no prelude. The viewer is immediately plunged into the action and gets to know the characters as the story unfolds: big and straightforward Igor with his archive album of everything in the world, energetic and daring Sanya, reserved and elusive Seregin, overemotional Vika, and slacker Pakha with a paper-clip necklace. The characters show traits of real teenagers with experience of orphanhood, and some are played by recent graduates of an orphanage. The mobile camera of cinematographer Alisher Khamikhodzhaev picks out phrases, glances, and gestures from the flow of events. Caught in the whirlwind of the party, it becomes an accomplice and documents the approach of looming independent life and the confusion and anxiety that come with it.