Scenes of Friendly Ties /

Credits

cast

Sonya Raisman

Director

Biography

Sonya Raizman (born 1990, Tomsk) studied directing at GITIS in Leonid Heifets’ workshop and later at the Moscow School of New Cinema. She began her career as an actress, working with leading Russian directors, before focusing on filmmaking. Her short The Hero received a Jury Diploma at Kinotavr. Her feature debut, Scenes of Friendly Ties, won Best Director and Best Actress (Maria Karpova) at the Mayak Film Festival in 2025.

Directors Statement

For me, making an auteur film always begins with the feeling that I cannot not express or explore a certain thought or story. Today, filmmakers face many obstacles on the way to realizing their ideas, and the lack of financial support for independent cinema is only one of them. Being in the circumstances I found myself in, I wanted to create a film whose score could be “played” within this restricted reality. Many of the dramaturgical and visual choices were born directly from these limitations. “Solutions” always imply “problems” – both in the lives of the characters and in the reality of producing independent films. Each scene in the film is based on observations I made within my close circle over the past five years. Some may call such an approach “too personal,” but I see it as working with a kind of “document.” My emotional response to what was happening to the people who matter to me became the fuel for starting this film. I believe that representing this “small memory” can, over time, stand alongside the “big memory” and shape how our fragile “here and now” will be seen in the future. The French artist Christian Boltanski once said: “Every person deserves their own museum.” I agree completely. I would be happy if Scenes of Friendly Ties could be seen not only as a film, but also as a museum of a lost generation in their thirties – through the faces of myself and my friends.