Igor VOLOSHIN Игорь ВОЛОШИН Igor VOLOCHINE   Russia, 2008, 89 mn  Colour, fiction

Nirvana ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ Нирвана    Nirvana  Nirvana

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Plot synopsis

Fed up with her life in Moscow, nurse Alisa moves to St. Petersburg. Her roommates in the collective flat are two junkies, Valera and her boyfriend Dead Man. First they fight, but soon the two women form a tender and substantial friendship. Together they even go after the Petersburg underworld when Dead Man is abducted because he can’t pay his debts. Life is hard and confusing and you have to act hard and cool if you want to get by.

 

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Commentaries and bibliography

Igor' Voloshin : Nirvana (2008), Yelena PROKHOROVA, kinokultura.com, 2008

 

<...>The extravagant makeup and elaborate costumes in which some of the protagonists perform, the exquisite exterior shots of Petersburg, and the lavish interiors are reminiscent of a pop opera, or of Brecht reborn as a punk, once again inventing the alienation effect. <...>
Anna Hoffmann www.berlinale.de

Director’s statement
This film is about the inevitable death of any person deprived of spiritual guidelines; a death both spiritual and physical. For a modern person, sometimes a powerful shock is needed, a severe dramatic blow, in order to awaken that person’s true, positive nature.
All the characters in the film lose everything they have. They lose one another through death, betrayal, deceit. All these mechanisms work on the central character, who experiences a complete catastrophe. Trying to find something major, something big in her life and genuinely wanting to find her other half, her beloved, she ruins the lives of those who find themselves in the cage of her passion – the passion to possess, and not to love.
The present is a terrible time; a time when there are thousands of ways of retreating from reality. Drugs are one of those ways, but they’re not the only one. It’s just the most obviously visible. Another form of retreat that you might not even suspect the existence of is “blindness,” when a person runs from his or her conscience, at first not wanting to see what is really happening, and then being unable to do so. Thus, that person, of his or her own free will, steps into emptiness. Blind conviction with regard to the rightness of one’s actions – actions that are destructive, amoral, defiling – rules over those who hold such a conviction like a powerful destructive weapon. It is a weapon that unleashes its destructive force on the territory of others who are vulnerable, lonely and close at hand.
Our characters look genuinely extravagant. It’s the result of spiritual emptiness. The greater the vacuum within someone, the more that person tries to hide his or her external wrapping. That is why the characters possess such an abundance of details on their bodies: clothes, accessories, jewels, piercings, tattoos.
This is a film about what happens to lonely people who dive into the ocean of passion. And then the breakup begins, which is what nirvana means when translated.
Igor Voloshin
Source : www.berlinale.de

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Selected in the following festivals :

- Sputnik nad Polska, Warsaw (Poland), 2011

- International debut film festival, Khanty Mansiysk (Russia), 2009

- Brussels European Film Festival : FFFB, Brussels (Belgium), 2008

- Festival of Central and Eastern Film , Wiesbaden (Germany), 2008

- Berlin International Film Festival : Berlinale, Berlin (Germany), 2008

- Warsaw Film Festival, Warsaw (Poland), 2008

- Annual award of the Guild of Historians of Cinema and Film Critics, Moscow (Russia), 2008

- Festival Russian kino 'Moscow Premier Screenings', Moscow (Russia), 2008

- Window to Europe Film Festival, Vyborg, Vyborg (Russia), 2008

- Open Russian Film Festival Kinotavr, Sochi (Russia), 2008

- Moscow International Film Festival (MIFF), Moscow (Russia), 2008

- Stockholm International Film Festival, Stockholm (Sweden), 2008

- Russian Film Festival, London (United Kingdom), 2008

- Lone Star International Film Festival, Fort Worth (Texas) (USA), 2008

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