Vanya is in the middle. I’m the one looking into the camera. Next to me is the production designer — a totally crazy girl. Across from me is Maksim, the cinematographer. And across from the crazy designer sits Katya, the producer.
The poster for the film was made by my friend Vanya. He believed that the square is a fascinating thing because nothing in the natural world is truly square. The square is a symbol of something purely human. It represents something that only you can have power over. He discovered this symbol for himself during the making of this film.
In the first part of the film, I want to explore the space of emigration in which I currently exist. I aim to depict myself and my presence within this space, while simultaneously recounting the story behind the film Mother’s Room.
This is my best friend Vanya. I couldn’t even imagine making films without him. Now we don’t really talk anymore… Fuck, I don’t even know how long it’s been… Maybe… a couple of months? We text every few months or so. Yeah. What happened — I’ll probably tell you later. I’m not ready right now.
I love this photo. For me, it’s some kind of quintessence, a representation of who I am. That half-darkness, that foolish youth — that’s cinema. That’s the space I somehow exist in.
This exposition is divided into three main sections and is called Symphony of the Human
, which will later become the three parts of my film:
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Me
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You
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Us
From each section, you will see various notes, photos, and images branching downward. These materials were created using a method I call a structured stream of consciousness—a paradoxical phrase, but one that best describes the process.
You are free to begin reading from any section (and from any part). As you go through each one and pay attention to how elements intersect across the columns, you will start to form an impression of what that part of the film will represent—its visual, textual, and structural qualities.
All of this material is intended to become a film later on.
In addition to the three main sections, there is also a hidden fourth part, titled:
“I CANNOT UNDERSTAND MYSELF HERE”
This part represents my unconscious—everything that I cannot fit into the structure.
In summary:
The exposition consists of three main sections (“Me”, “You”, “Us”) and a fourth hidden one (“I CANNOT UNDERSTAND MYSELF HERE”). Each is built from fragments of thought and imagery, forming a structured, Kerouac-inspired stream of consciousness. This is a preliminary act of self-exploration that serves as the foundation for the creation of the film Mother’s Rooms.
It’s winter. I’m a child. A memory like that — a big hurt, a silly kind of childhood hurt. I’m walking down the street past my school with my mom. She’s walking in front of me, I’m behind her, in the snow. And there, under the snow, there’s ice — you know, when snow has already turned into ice — and you step on what looks like snow, but underneath it there’s a lump of frozen ice. So I’m walking, not knowing, and I slip, I fall on my back. I start screaming, shrieking, the way a kid can scream and shriek — maybe from pain, maybe to get attention, maybe both. And my mother keeps walking. She doesn’t stop right away. She keeps walking, takes five or six more steps, then turns around and says, “Don’t scream.”
What could have made Józef Piłsudski want to have his heart buried in Vilnius next to his mother? What kind of love is this — this kind of love? Will I do the same? Do I want my heart to be buried with my mother?
The main question I ask myself is this:
After watching this film — will anything change?
And how much it hurts — how deeply it hurts — that things turned out this way?
Six years ago — God, I was making a film to tell you that I didn’t love you.
But now, I want to make a film to say that I do.
And yet, I have this question —
I’m asking:
Can art be, let’s say, a bridge between you and me?
Will you see it, as the film unfolds?
Back then, I was stating something —
I was stating the absence of love and the presence of pain.
That’s what filled our space — filled what was between us.
Now, I want to state something else.
Well, not that I love you —
Rather, that I acknowledge.
I want to show the emptiness that has formed between us.
Your mother is on another planet.
The third part should be a phone call and a real conversation — a living proof of the manifesto of my creative work.
Part 1. Raising One’s Gaze from the Abyss
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The Imperfection of Human Nature and the Striving for Wholeness
A human being is, by nature, doomed to unhappiness, as they lack inner wholeness — something I believe is ultimately impossible to fully attain. At best, a person can only strive toward this wholeness, but never completely reach it. Wholeness, as I understand it, is the ability to “stand in the clearing of being,” that is, to find one’s true existence instead of simply “being in itself.”
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Paths to the Clearing of Being.
There are many ways to attempt to access this clearing of being. In the past, this role was fulfilled by God, and also by death, which awakens existential dread and compels one to turn inward, toward the “without” or the point of exposure (death remains the primary means). Art—especially cinema—possesses a power that can awaken the desire to attain inner being. This power in film is not something tangible or concrete, but must permeate the film from beginning to end. It should not be integrated into the film as something specific, but should manifest in all of its elements: from the initial idea, the script, the filming, the editing, down to the smallest detail, including the emotions and existence of the author projected into the work.
The question of references is always a complicated one, because… I would like to explain that by “references” I don’t only mean what my future film will look like, but rather what I was thinking about during the making of this exposition — what I was internally referring to, what visual language and directing systems I was contemplating, which authors, lives, destinies, and bodies of work were present in my mind as I imagined how I would approach my film.
Let it be Carl Theodor Dreyer and his film The Parson’s Widow. Let it be The Abyss (1910) by Urban Gad. Let it be Lars von Trier, whom I’ve watched just slightly more than not at all — for example, Dancer in the Dark. Let it be Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and his entire life as a massive reference for the kind of author I believe I must become — and for the way one is supposed to die.
Let it be how Alexander Dovzhenko perceived and felt space — for instance, in his film Earth.
And let it be Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, and the way nature breathes and lives in his film Sunrise.
This is how I think about references.
Who am I, really, to elevate my personal trauma into something that an audience should witness? And on top of that, to be so audacious as to try to turn it into an artistic work rather than a documentary—because I fucking hate documentary. I believe that art should be more than just a social statement. Light, space, and openings matter; they should shape the content and tell the story just as much as anything else. That’s why I want to make fiction films.
Eight years ago, I surrounded the film with my father’s drawings. My father is a very, very kind and good person, and he creates these kinds of drawings. I used them as illustrations of the inner world, of a kind of hell in which the protagonist exists. And I always wonder — what is it about my father that makes him draw like this? I don’t know.
