Produced by Stereotactic, this is documentary filmmaker Sasha Voronov's atmospheric debut feature about a mysterious disease, quarantine, and the aftermath of the epidemic. Hoping to save her mother, a young girl is forced to leave home and start out into the outside world, full of threats and uncertainty. Portraying post-apocalypse on the border of the city and forest as a metaphor of growing up and the new ecology, the film featured in the main competition of the New Holland Island International Debut Film Festival, which took place online this year. Its premiere screening, followed by a Q&A with the creators, will be held at Garage Screen.
A small town in Siberia is quarantined for several months. People are dying of a mysterious illness, the source of which lies hidden in the water. The survivors hide in their apartments, but the contaminated water flows through their homes. Self-defense groups and despondent loners hunting their own kind roam through the empty streets. In an attempt to save her mother's life, the heroine ventures out into the unknown, so that she can overcome her fear and attempt to rekindle her relationship with the outside world, which is now humanity's mortal enemy. Sasha Voronov's film is an attempt to imagine how the relationships between people and nature can change when some people no longer have any reason to be human, and someone else sees an opportunity to be rid of them. One of the roles is played by Alla Mitrofanova, a prominent Saint Petersburg philosopher whose work addresses questions of new ontology.
Mom, I Befriended Ghosts
Dir. Sasha Voronov
Russia, 2020. 66 min. 12+