Stop-Zemlia

“They say when you get goosebumps, your soul touches your body.”

It‘s Masha, Iana 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.                                

details

  • Runtime

    120 min
  • Country

    Ukraine
  • Year of Presentation

    2021
  • Year of Production

    2021
  • Director

    Kateryna Gornostai
  • Cast

    Maria Fedorchenko, Yana Isaienko, Oleksandr Ivanov, Arsenii Markov
  • Production Company

    Esse Production House
  • Berlinale Section

    Generation
  • Berlinale Category

    Feature Film

Biography Kateryna Gornostai

The director, writer and editor was born in Lutsk, Ukraine in 1989. She studied at the Marina Razbezhkina and Mikhail Ugarov School of Documentary Film and Theatre in Moscow and began making documentaries in 2012. She later moved into fiction and hybrid forms. Alongside her work as a filmmaker, she also teaches documentary filmmaking in a number of educational projects.

Filmography Kateryna Gornostai

2013 Mizh namy (Between Us) | 2014 Euromaidan. Chornovy montazh (Euromaidan. Rough Cut) | 2015 Viddalik (Away) | 2015 Skriz maidan (Maidan Is Everywhere) | 2016 Zgushhonka (Condensed) | 2017 Buzok (Lilac) | 2018 Crocodyl (Crocodile)