EVERYBODY IS OK
Katya Zayaz, Alexander Pukhov
GORKY FILM STUDIO (Russia)
Old shepherd loses his memory. Soon he will lose the last link with reality: his routes, as in 2020 waters of Tigris River will flood Hasankeyf — one of the oldest human settlements in Mesopotamia.
Main character of the film is an old shepherd, RAMASAN. He is a father of 13 children, an owner of 120 goats and of several caves, muslim, Kurdish. He also suffers from Alzheimer. Physically he is still strong, but he can't understand what is going on in the city. Moreover, roads of HASANKEYF is the only link to reality that he has. It is through the decaying consciousness of this elderly person who repeats the same stories over and over, who confuses where the boundaries between dreams and reality lies, and who mistakenly takes strangers as old friends, that we come closest to the problem of memory loss, in both the historical and personal sense. Ramasan's fading memory reflects the tragedy of Hasankeyf's slow death; both man and city with their long stories are forgetting who they are.
Katya Zayaz
KATYA ZAYAZ (1990) is a Russian director and screenwriter, a graduate from Moscow State University, the Faculty of History. She also graduated from the Moscow School of New Cinema in 2018 where she studied filmmaking from Fred Kelemen. Her debut short fiction was selected to several international film festivals (Weimar Backup & Beyond Film Festival 2019, Lublin International Short Film Festival 2019) and won the Grand Prix at national competition of Shnit Worldwide Film Festival. Currently Katya works on her debut documentary film as a director, cinematographer and editor.
Alexander Pukhov
ALEXANDER PUKHOV has been working as a travel journalist, author, and showrunner since 2011. He started his career as an author and presenter of travel documentary project called THE DANCING PLANET for one of the biggest Russian travel channels My Planet. He traveled all around the globe (26 countries) to capture traditional national dances. Last year he worked on the travel documentary project, called BIG WATER. THE LOCALS telling the stories of residents in Russia who live next to big rivers, lakes, and water reservoirs.
Director’s statement
The story of HASANKEYF’S flooding is being told around the world. Just look at the Washington Post, Reuters, The New York Times or The Guardian news feeds. Photos, videos and reports record the events and the words of the victims of this relocation. This Film sets itself another mission. Without getting involved in the reporter’s tasks of investigating the causes and consequences of the destruction of Hasankeyf, it plunges into the state of a dying city and its inhabitants. Film fixes in place their daily routines, their habits and activities, and their routes before their landscape is lost forever. The focus of the film is thus not on political facts, but on the personal lived experience of the people themselves. Thanks to a close observation of these everyday events within the context of the impending flooding, this otherwise ordinary, neutral information acquires a very personal character and becomes a sharp and poignant experience.
Where are we at?
Total Budget: 85.163,00 EUR
Financing in place: 32.462,00 EUR
Sales Agent: Maria Bezenkova, Festival&Market Coordinator, Gorky Studio Russia
Territories available: World
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Production Company profile
GORKY FILM STUDIO is one of the oldest film studios in Russia that was founded back in 1915. Since then hundreds of documentaries and fiction films have been released by the studio including such outstanding works as MOTHER by V. Pudovkin, VOUCHER TO LIFE by N. Ekka, THE HOUSE I LIVE IN by L. Kulidzhanov and many others. Since the studio’s modernisation has been launched in 2019 the updated field of its activities concludes the support of emerging talents and the production of arthouse features and creative documentary films.