Stop-Zemlia

It‘s Masha, Yana and Senia‘s last but one year of high school. Among the thriving pot plants in the classroom and to the sound effects of a Biology lesson about physical signs of stress, the young protagonists grapple with themselves and with one another. 16-year-old Masha is the quiet center of Kateryna Gornostai’s feature debut. Steering clear of both simplified narratives and overly simplistic psychology, the film depicts her as introverted, sensitive and in love with Sasha, another classmate whose aloofness and passivity she finds a perpetual challenge. When Masha is dancing alone in her room at night, high above the rooftops of a city somewhere in the Ukraine, nothing about it feels staged. Rather, it is an invocation of the moment, of genuine emotion – and of pain. (Berlinale)

Director's Filmography (Selection)
Stop-Zemlia (2021) - Crocodyl (Crocodile, 2018, short) - Buzok (Lilac, 2017, short) - Skriz maidan (Maidan Is Everywhere, 2015, doc) - Euromaidan. Chornovy montazh (Euromaidan. Rough Cut, 2014, doc)
European Panorama Fiction 2022
Kateryna Gornostai
Ukraine 2021
color
122 minutes
Ukrainian
OV with English subtitles
Screenplay Kateryna Gornostai
Cinematography Oleksandr Roshchyn
Editing Nikon Romanchenko, Kateryna Gornostai
Sound/Sounddesign Mykhailo Zakutskyi, Oleg Goloveshkin
Music Maryana Klochko
With Maria Fedorchenko, Arsenii Markov, Yana Isaienko, Oleksandr Ivanov
Producer(s) Vitalii Sheremetiev, Viktoriia Khomenko, Natalia Libet, Olga Beskhmelnytsina
Production
ESSE Production House
World Sales
Pluto Film
World Premiere
Berlinale 2021

In cooperation with International Film Festival Innsbruck.