Sunless City

Colour, 35 mm
Russia, 2005, 101 min
IP – International premiere
Section: East of the West - competitive
Oficiální stránky: www.sunless-city.ru

Synopsis

St Petersburg. A big city beautiful yet repugnant, energetic yet grown tired of the social fissures within it. The pervading existential instability is also projected into the story of the talented actress Ludmila. A drug habit has drawn her towards Alex who wants to make a name for himself as a decadent performer. Ludmila is desperate to get hold of money for drugs. She makes the acquaintance of Yegor, who falls in love with her. The theatre (she is performing in a Daniil Kharms slapstick comedy) means everything to her. She feels that Yegor could provide the strong support she needs, but she is greatly affected by a painful past and also lured by visions of the boundless freedom represented by Alex’s community. Yegor is only gradually able to orient himself in the labyrinth of Ludmila’s existence, yet he is determined to rescue her. But he has no idea about the power of drugs and into what maze of uncertainty and doubt love has led him....

About the director

Sergei Potemkin (b. 1978) has been working in his native St Petersburg with the makers of the TV programme “House of Film” (“Dom kino”) since 1997. He studied in the meantime at the State University of Film and Television. In the years 1997-99 he spent time studying with Krzysztof Zanussi in Warsaw. After the short video films Othello (1998) and King Lear (1999), he made the short film The Machine Is Here (Mashina prishla, 2001), screened at the IFF in Karlovy Vary. Sunless City (2005) is his feature debut.