in Total, the competition involved 10 films from Italy, Canada, China, Poland, Russia, Senegal, Serbia, USA, France, Chile. Winners of the prizes will be selected by an international jury chaired by the winner of the “Golden bear” the Berlin festival for the film “Synonyms” Israeli Director Nadav Lapid.
the drama of Ivan Tverdovsky, “the Conference”, which the Director filmed on his own script, explores the explosive topic related to the psychological echo of a terrorist act in the Theatrical center on Dubrovka in 2002. Her character Natalia was a participant and witness terrible events, and 17 years after the tragedy she arrives in Moscow to spend an evening in memory of the victims of the terrorist attack. And re-living this long nightmare, suffers a fatal mistake which has left traces on all its further life. In this role Natalia pavlenkova; has starred Olga Lapshina, Ksenia Zueva, Oleg Feoktistov, Jan Tsapnik, Aleksandr Semchev. The producers of the film Ekaterina Mikhailova and Konstantin FAM.
As told by Ivan Tverdovsky, “the Russian newspaper”, in the fateful 2002, he was a student, but among his comrades were killed in the attack. “And then I had quite a lot of friends in this tragedy one way or another connected. Thinking about the film, I was looking for some optics that would allow to see what happened with hindsight. In the story, two women managed to escape by jumping out the window of the toilet – it was a purely instinctive act. Our heroine realized with horror that there is no way back, and there, in the hall, were her family: a husband, a son and a daughter. The son dies, the family is falling apart. Shocked by the loss, she went to the nuns, but once he returned to Moscow to spend the evening in memory of the victims of the attack: she recognizes it as his Christian mission. And the entire film is built as the stories of those who survived. I tried to use real memories to make a film on the border between documentary and fiction. All of this combined history of the heroine and her broken family. Her attempt to justify it to myself, pray for his act and earn the forgiveness of his relatives.
We did not do the reconstruction. This is a modern story: we, today, remember the tragic events of 2002. The film is about a mother who left her family in a terrible moment: she managed to escape, obeying the instinct of self-preservation, but the memories left on the death of his son, the guilt will torment her whole life. And to atone for such a sin is impossible.
This film is about that man always remains man in the most terrible circumstances. Because now such times that such a tragedy can be repeated anywhere: the agenda of global terrorism has not disappeared, and we of anything is not insured. And to understand the psychology of the hostages that they were governed by then, what lived in those days, their soul – I think it’s important. Not only for the memory of them, but as a lesson for the future.”
the Venice film festival opened on Lido island on 2 September.
