Kateryna Gornostai – Stop-Zemlia #Berlinale2021

PODCAST | Matt Micucci interviews Kateryna Gornostai, director of the film Stop-Zemlia.

A conversation with Kateryna Gornostai, director of Stop-Zemlia, the Crystal Bear-winning film from this year’s Generation 14plus strand at the Berlinale. The film depicts the lives of a class of adolescents in contemporary-times Ukraine. In this film, Gornostai shares the interesting process that helped the film come to like and her documentary roots, which contributed to the shaping of Stop-Zemlia, among other things.

Stop-Zemlia: It‘s Masha, Yana 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.

To discover more about the 71st edition of Berlin International Film Festival, click here.

The post Kateryna Gornostai – Stop-Zemlia #Berlinale2021 appeared first on Fred Film Radio.