What does the end of the world look like? On February 23, 2022, the sky is overcast in Moscow. In their 50 square meter apartment, among Japanese Nobuyoshi Araki’s photo books, their DVDs and a PlayStation 5, filmmakers Kira Kovalenko and Kantemir Balagov think about the future. This very day, she leaves in France Unclenched Fists, a film crowned with the Un certain regard prize at the Cannes Film Festival, in 2021, already in theaters for a few months in Russia, where the reception is shy. He refines the scenario of Monica, his third feature film, after the noticed Tesnota. A cramped life (2017) and A tall girl (2019), which he wants to shoot in their hometown of Nalchik.
In the spring, if all goes as planned, they will leave the capital with their dog Rocco to return to live there, 1,500 kilometers south of Moscow, near their family and the Caucasus mountains. The next day, Kantemir Balagov woke up around 6 a.m., earlier than usual. One look at Instagram and a sense of dread runs through it. He wakes up Kira: Russia has invaded Ukraine. The rest of the day, they pace around the apartment, their eyes riveted on the television where the war breaks out live. Powerless, paralyzed. Their world has just changed. Today, the couple lives in Los Angeles. Like other members of the country’s cultural elites, starting with their peer Kirill Serebrennikov, they chose to leave Russia, only to receive contemptuous comments from those in power for those who left.
The spleen of exile
Kantemir Balagov, 31, and Kira Kovalenko, 33, embodied the future of Russian cinema before the war. In three films of tender, raw and intense beauty, they showed the youth of the Caucasus, the traumas of the Second World War, the scars of the conflict in Chechnya and the thirst for freedom of women crushed by the family weight. By taking their time head-on, they had grasped the doubts, the wandering, the violence and the darkness of a generation in the breach. They were adored by moviegoers, crowned at festivals, dubbed by the masters of independent cinema. “Their greatest quality, observes Thierry Frémaux, the general delegate of the Cannes Film Festival, it is to be of their generation. They make a young cinema, about young people, very contemporary and which tells about a Russian society that we hardly know. » Everything was open to them, until the invasion came to interrupt everything.
You have 85.96% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.