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DAU. NATASHA

By Ilya KHRZANOVSKY, Jekaterina OERTEL

NEW HORIZONS INT'L FILM FESTIVAL / NEW HORIZONS ASSOCIATION - as DISTR Theatrical, TV, DVD-video, VOD, POLAND / FEST

Drama - Completed 2020

Festivals
& Awards

Berlin IFF 2020

Silver Berlin Bear - Outstanding Artistic Contribution (Jürgen Jürges)

- Year of production
- 2020
- Genres
- Drama, Experimental
- Countries
- GERMANY, UKRAINE, UNITED KINGDOM, RUSSIA
- Languages
- RUSSIAN, UKRANIAN, ENGLISH
- Duration
- 138 mn
- Director(s)
- Ilya KHRZANOVSKY, Jekaterina OERTEL
- Writer(s)
- Ilya KHRZHANOVSKIY
- Cast
- Natalia BEREZHNAYA, Olga SHKABARNYA, Vladimir AZHIPPO, Alexei BLINOV, Luc BIGÉ
- Producer(s)
- Sergey ADONYEV (Phenomen Films)
- Synopsis
- The first part of the monumental, total work by Ilya Khrzhanovsky is an introduction to the DAU world constructed with incredible scale while also being precise in the tiniest of details. The shocking and entrancing film traps characters and audiences in its protracted shots to tell the story of a lonely canteen manager in a city-sized institution sealed off to the outside world. The plot runs its course over several days in 1952 during which Khrzhanovsky makes us witness the dramatic entanglements of the titular heroine. The camera (shot on 35mm film!) is akin to a spy, never taking its eyes off Natasha, as she slings food, flirts, holds drunken conversations, is stabbed by a young assistant, or has sex. She is totally unaware that her banal dreams of love and her minor transgressions in the canteen are being consumed by absolute totalitarian power. DAU reveals that power's mechanisms. For the needs of the film, the filmmakers built a city-institute in an abandoned Khrakov water plant, where they literally locked up volunteer professional and amateur actors for many months. The whole grew into a radical and controversial experiment at the intersection of cinema, visual arts, psychodrama and social sciences.

DAU. NATASHA

Festivals& Awards

Festivals
& Awards