Filmmaker Statement

I discussed the idea with Stanislaw Wegrzyn, who choreographed his performance to the original score by Natalia Tsupryk, a Ukrainian composer who based the piece on old Ukrainian folk music. Victoria Valcheva’s voiceover is pitch perfect - hopefully it becomes part of the fabric of the film, and sort of gets under your skin. Cinematographer Simon Van Paris and I were really aligned in how the film should look. We drew inspiration from the photos of W. Eugene Smith, especially his Minamata series. Also Kaneto Shindo’s film Onibaba, which is shot brilliantly. Both with plenty of contrast, really deep blacks and sort of resplendent, glowy whites. Naturally they both shot on black and white film, so we did the same in order to get a similar feel.