IRINA

Director's Statement

Carrying a child and giving birth changes the life of every woman. Mine too. IRINA is a very personal and very feminine (but not feminist) story about re-discovering the world bringing new life into it.
A young woman, Irina, agrees to carry another couple’s child for money. She needs the money to support her own family. Irina hates the world she lives in. It is a poor, gloomy, stinking, animalistic, scowling, hopeless world. Ironically, at the end of the film when she does have the financial possibility to make a choice, Irina decides to go back home – where her heart is.
IRINA is a film about forgiveness. A story that raises moral and ethical questions, but also leads us to a place where their answers become irrelevant. To a place where forgiving is the only way to overcome the despair, pain and anger. The only way to survive.
IRINA catches a glimpse of the poetic in a world that at first glance appears anything but poetic. The film tells the story using simple means of expression. It does not rely on stylised, intrusive and non-standard visual approaches. It is maximally authentic and instils in the viewer a sense of sincerity. It peers so closely at the real and the concrete that in drawing closer, under the guise of everyday life, another image, another presence starts to peek through.
Being raised without a father this film is my deep bow to every mother.