Films A to Z
Stop-Zemlia
- Runtime:
- 120 min.
- Year of Production:
- 2021
- Country:
- Ukraine
- Director:
- Cast:
- Maria Fedorchenko
Yana Isaienko
Oleksandr Ivanov
Arsenii Markov - Production Company:
- Esse Production House
- Berlinale Section:
- Generation
- Berlinale Category:
- Feature Film
“They say when you get goosebumps, your soul touches your body.”
It‘s Masha, Iana and Senia‘s last but one year of high school. Among the thriving pot plants in the classroom and to the sound effects of a Biology lesson about physical signs of stress, the young protagonists grapple with themselves and with one another. 16-year-old Masha is the quiet center of Kateryna Gornostai’s feature debut. Steering clear of both simplified narratives and overly simplistic psychology, the film depicts her as introverted, sensitive and in love with Sasha, another classmate whose aloofness and passivity she finds a perpetual challenge. When Masha is dancing alone in her room at night, high above the rooftops of a city somewhere in the Ukraine, nothing about it feels staged. Rather, it is an invocation of the moment, of genuine emotion – and of pain.
BIOGRAFIE Kateryna Gornostai
The director, writer and editor was born in Lutsk, Ukraine in 1989. She studied at the Marina Razbezhkina and Mikhail Ugarov School of Documentary Film and Theatre in Moscow and began making documentaries in 2012. She later moved into fiction and hybrid forms. Alongside her work as a filmmaker, she also teaches documentary filmmaking in a number of educational projects.
FILMOGRAFIE Kateryna Gornostai (selection)
2021 Stop-Zemlia
2018 Crocodyl (Crocodile)
2017 Buzok (Lilac)
2016 Zgushhonka (Condensed)
2015 Skriz maidan (Maidan Is Everywhere)
2015 Viddalik (Away)
2014 Euromaidan. Chornovy montazh (Euromaidan. Rough Cut)
2013 Mizh namy (Between Us)