"This film is about my friend and producer": the director Valeriya Gai Germanika about the documentary Mashenka

The director Valeriya Gai Germanika introduced the film Mashenka, which is part of the Documentary Film Competition of the 48th Moscow International Film Festival.

What was intended to be a documentary about volunteers helping the homeless suddenly turns into a narrative about impossible love. A film producer falls in love with the main character, a homeless man named Edik. The camera captures not only the social drama but an inner revolution which comes at a price. Fighting against addiction, rejection, the lure of the streets, and the fear of being authentic. Yet, against all odds, in this struggle we see a radical act of recognizing humanity in someone who is usually overlooked. This is not a film about the homeless and volunteers. It is a film about boundaries that dissolve when we finally begin to see human beings in one another.

Valeriya Gai Germanika: "Edik was not part of the Special Military Operation, but he was involved in the events that took place in Donbas in 2014, after which he had a post-traumatic stress disorder. This film is called Mashenka because it’s about my friend, a producer, with whom we started making a film about volunteers working with the homeless, sex workers, people with AIDS, marginalized people. I chose Edik as the main character: he was both homeless and a volunteer. But Masha suddenly started a relationship with him during the shooting, and I began filming their story without any idea how it would go. My next film will be about myself: I spent two years filming my life and my suffering. In a nutshell, it’s a film about a director, a woman, an artist. And in fiction films, I’m drawn to custom films; I’m now working on a big project like that, and I really like I can make a film from scratch there".