Home / News / «Once in Trubchevsk» by Larisa Sadilova in the section Un Certain Regard of the Cannes Film Festival

The film “Once in Trubchevsk” by Larisa Sadilova is an independent project of the film companies Arsi-film and SHIM Film, produced by Larisa Schneiderman, Larisa Sadilova and Rustam Akhadov. The film will have its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. The Russian premiere will be held at Kinotavr in June.

The film tells the story of two families from the Russian city of Trubchevsk, Bryansk region. Its population is fourteen thousand people, and in a small town nothing stays a secret. And the cleverly hidden romance between the characters becomes known to their families. And neighbors. The usual plot of the film gets the taste of real life, balancing between documentary and fiction genres.

• Larisa Sadilova, director and scriptwriter: “I immersed my characters in the lives of ordinary people, shooting them along with the real residents of Trubchevsk. I needed the actors to catch up with them. Some twists were invented right on the set, it gave the film a breath of fresh air. Sometimes new characters, that were not in the script, emerged. They suddenly appeared and organically entered the film.”

“Once in Trubchevsk” was Larisa’s third film, which she shot in the Bryansk region, and the first project without state funding. A small budget of an independent film imposed restrictions on production, but in a sense it allowed the project to be born - the story grew out of the short film “Happy New Year!”, which was originally supposed to become a part of the almanac. The film was shown at the Our Cinema Film Festival in Bryansk in the summer of 2018, and the authors decided to shoot a full-length film based on it. According to Larisa, she “followed the heroes” while creating the story, and one of the heroes was the city of Trubchevsk.

• Anatoly Petriga, сinematographer: We came up with stylistics based on the possibilities we had. For example, a static camera, real, almost documentary light (because we had a minimum of  equipment) - by the way, this light helped to connect staged episodes with those that we shot chronically. This happened precisely because of industrial asceticism.

Director’s biography.

Larisa Sadilova was born on October 21, 1963 in Bryansk. She graduated from the VGIK (in 1986, acting department, the workshop of S. A. Gerasimov and T. F. Makarova). In the movie she made her debut as an actress in 1984, starring as a high school student in the film "Lev Tolstoy." In 1998 she made her debut as a director with the black-and-white film “Happy Birthday!”, which won prizes at international and national film festivals: “Kinotavr” in Sochi, international film festivals in Mannheim, Cottbus, Bratislava and the Georges Sadoul Prize. The following director’s films have also received numerous awards, including the main prize of the Rotterdam International Film Festival.

1998 “Happy Birthday!” – fiction

2002 “With Love, Lilja” – fiction

2005 “Babysitter Required” – fiction

2007 “Nothing Personal” – fiction

2009 “Sonny” – fiction

2013 “She” – fiction

2016 “Country show” – documentary

2019 “Once in Trubchevsk” – fiction

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