2024 | Fiction | 90 min. | Russia | 18+
Autumn, 1929. Lina, from the noble Golitsyn family, arrives to meet her husband, Georgy Osorgin, who is serving a prison sentence in the Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp. Unbeknownst to Lina, her husband will be shot after she leaves the island.
Directors Statement
SLON (Solovki Prison Camp) "We will drive mankind to happiness with an iron hand." Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp (commonly referred to as SLON for its Russian acronym) was the first, and until 1929 the only correctional labor camp in the USSR located on the Solovetsky Islands. During the fourteen years of its existence, about 200 thousand prisoners passed through it. Every third of them was shot, murdered by torture or died of hard labor. One of the richest monasteries in Tsarist Russia was turned into a concentration camp by the Bolsheviks, and its first prisoners were White Guard officers who opposed them in the civil war of 1918–1920. A mere suspicion of anti-state activity was enough to be sent here. The inmates were mostly nobles, priests, and intellectuals. In my film, I want to tell the story of Georgi Osorgin and his wife Alexandra Golitsina (Lina). The story takes place in the fall of 1929. Lina arrives for a visit with her husband Georgi, who is serving a sentence in the Solovetsky camp. Lina does not know that after her departure from the island, her husband will be shot along with a large number of other prisoners. The camp authorities took Osorgin's word of honor as an officer not to tell his wife anything about his predetermined fate. The couple spends the three days they have been given in happiness. They rejoice in the most inappropriate place: the death camp. This is a story about dignity, principles, and nobility: the most terrible events did not break the protagonist, they did not embitter him. He continued to help others, kept his sense of humor, kept his spirits up. Finding himself in the punishment cell before the firing squad, he dutifully puts on a robe and corrects it as if it were an officer's uniform. And he looks forward with a smile – because he knows that death is not the end. His principal task is to save his soul. It is not the camp tortures that are scary, it is standing before God that is scary. Despite the short running time (a little over 80 minutes) it covers many aspects of camp life through the story of the two main characters. This part of Russian history is very important to me. I originally wanted to make a movie about the pre-revolutionary era, a truly magnificent era. I believe that, no matter how clichéd, it was indeed ‘the beautiful’ Russia, which is now irretrievably lost. I tell this story in memory of those who died during the years of repression. I would very much like for all of us to always remember those events. I want this movie to be accessible to the younger generation as well. The film is black and white, shot on film. It looks like an old scrapbook with black and white pictures, blurry or fuzzy in places. The soundtrack, on the other hand, is very contemporary, made up entirely of electronic music. Sincerely, M. FOMINA
Director: Marusya Fomina
Producers: Alexey Kiselev, Sergei Bondarchuk, Anastasia Koretskaya and Alexander Kosarim
Сast: Anton Rival, Olga Balatskaya, Denis Prytkov, Alexander Mizev and Galina Tyunina
