‘There Are a Lot of Personal Things Here That I Wanted to Talk About’

In early April, the KARO 11 Oktyabr cinema theatre hosted an official premiere of the film Flood directed by Ivan Tverdovsky, creative head of Screen Arts at the HSE Art and Design School. The film is based on the story of the same name by Yevgeny Zamyatin.

Flood is a psychological drama about 17-year-old Anna, who stops talking after the loss of her parents. She faces a difficult life, including bullying by other teenagers and domestic violence by the relatives who take her in.

The film stars Sofya Shidlovskaya as Anna, Maxim Schegolev as Trofim, and Anna Slyu as Sofya. In 2022, Anna Slyu received the Best Actress award at the Zimny Festival for her role in Flood.

Film critic Denis Vilenkin told the audience that ‘after such a powerful finale set to Debussy’s music, you’d want to stay inside yourself, in your shell a little… The film invites us to do that—to remain in our thoughts for a while,’ he said.

Ivan Tverdovsky

© HSE University

Ivan Tverdovsky said that Zamyatin’s Flood has already been adapted twice before. ‘It was important for me not to go down the same path and not just do a third adaptation, but to find a modern place in this story where this whole story can happen,’ the director explained. ‘This is where the idea of the sports environment, about athletes, came from. This gives Zamyatin’s text a unique ring.’

He also explained why the main character is always silent. ‘Dramatically, many use the fact that there is a weak person who cannot fight back, cannot speak out, convey or say something important. Therefore, it is twice as painful in the film to see Anna Slyu’s character demand that the heroine “talk, talk”—this is something from our life,’ says Ivan Tverdovsky. ‘I know this feeling very well, when you cannot do something, and they keep demanding it from you. There is a lot of personal stuff here that I wanted to talk about through Zamyatin’s text.’

The film was shot in a 3:4 aspect ratio—the crew wanted to focus on the characters, their emotions and reactions, and not on the environment. ‘Our space is very conditional,’ the director explained. ‘There are thousands of sports centres. This story is not about space—there is no space there.’

The HSE Art and Design School acted as a partner of the Kino.Art.Pro film distribution company that organised the film premiere and special screenings in various cities of Russia. The film was also shown in St Petersburg, Veliky Novgorod, and Novosibirsk, where Ivan Tverdovsky took part in the film discussion. The next premiere screenings will take place on April 27 in Samara and on May 3 in Magnitogorsk.

Works by HSE University’s Screen Arts students supervised by Ivan Tverdovsky are regularly shown in cinemas and at other cultural venues in Moscow. For example, on April 7, a special screening of student works was held in the Lecture Hall of the Museum of Moscow, and students have previously presented their films at the Pioneer cinema theatre.