Estonia, Armenia, France, Belgium
A young Russian couple, feeling helplessness and sadness over the war, decides to leave their home for good. Their journey to Georgia becomes a surrealist nightmare. Their greatest fear – being separated at the border – catches up with them from an unexpected angle.
Fear, shame, guilt, depression – these are the feelings that have followed me since the beginning of the Russian war against Ukraine. It is as if I fell into a nightmare from which it is impossible to wake up. And the strangest thing was that the Russian people around me continued to live their everyday lives as if nothing had changed, which made me feel like I was living in a parallel reality.
Living in St. Petersburg, I felt responsible for what was happening, but all protests were harshly suppressed, and it was difficult to do anything. Later, I left Russia and moved to Armenia, my country of birth. There, I met my friends from Russia who, like me, opposed the war and had fled their country due to their inability to influence the situation, as well as fear of arrests and mobilisation.
I decided to interview some of them about their experiences of the repressions, feelings about the war and immigration. One story that particularly resonated with me was that of Kirill and Dasha. Their narrative was full of striking visual imagery and echoed many of my own feelings. It became the foundation of the film WINTER IN MARCH.
Two genres are intertwined in the film: documentary and road movie. On the other hand, the protagonists’ journey to Georgia is shown more as a metaphysical trip from the underworld where real events are mixed with nightmares, emphasising the idea that war is something surreal and resembles a bad dream from which it is impossible to wake up.
The most important metaphor of the film is snow that accompanies the characters throughout their journey from north to south. In a figurative sense, they carry the snow with them to Georgia where it never snows at the end of March. Snow alludes to emptiness and disappearance in some scenes. It also covers the tanks and the soldiers’ helmets.
The technique of the film is puppet animation mixed with embroidery and digital embroidery. Materials are sometimes sewn accurately and sometimes more roughly to emphasise the meaning of each scene. The aesthetic of the film is stylised and conceptual rather than realistic. Everything is made of fabric, playing with which allows visual allegory in scenes. For example, fabric can be torn and burned, it rips, threads come out. Bandages and medical cotton are used to imitate the snow.
This story is also based on my own experiences and feelings about the ongoing war. Leaving Russia with my family after the start of the war, I know firsthand the strain that migration can put on family relationships. War always becomes personal and catches up with us wherever we are.
A young Russian couple, feeling helplessness and sadness over the war, decides to leave their home for good. Their journey to Georgia becomes a surrealist nightmare. Their greatest fear – being separated at the border – catches up with them from an unexpected angle.
