Art cinema

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Don’t Cry
Russia

Duration: 45 minutes

Synopsis

Title: derived from the Gospel of Luke:

Luke 7:12 and 7:13

As he approached the town gate, a dead person was being carried out—the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. And a large crowd from the town was with her.

When the Lord saw her, his heart went out to her and he said, “Don’t cry.”

Genre: an existential drama

THE GENERAL PLOT LINE: а story of a heroine whose only child, 5 years of age, tragically died. How to keep sanity? How to survive this? How to live after this?

THE PARALLEL PLOT LINE: It is as a film in film, where the actress plays the heroine and the director plays himself.

PLACE AND TIME: a modern Russian city (Moscow), present day.

FILMING STAGES: real outdoors and real interiors in Moscow and outskirts (city of Dolgoprudnyy)

VISUAL PRESENTATION: Hand-held camera, steady camera. Long scenes, depicting in detail the emotional status of the heroine. Numerous closeups.

A special place in the film is dedicated to the flashbacks: scenes of Katya’s recollections of her once happy life when her boy was alive and all family was together. The flashbacks play as contrast to her tragic general plot line. The flashbacks have visual effects of a home video.

The picture is to be shot with an HD digital camera. Ratio: 16:9

STRUCTURE: The screenplay is composed of 26 scenes by their length and action completion properties in each.

CHARACTERS. SYSTEM OF CHARACTERS:

The central heroine: Katya: a young beautiful woman, 30, a medical doctor. She is divorced with the father of the dead boy.

Secondary characters:
- Katy’a ex-husband;
- director;
- medical doctor, Katya’s coworker;
- son.

This is the way a specific actors’ structure opens up in the film: a female role backgrounded by the roles of various men.

SOUND PRESENTATION:

A finished sound track, recorded during filming, is used. The sound is not an auxiliary feature in this film. It plays an equal part with the video. There are scenes where Katya is submerged in her torments, while she listens to muffled sounds from behind the walls, to her own heartbeat, to her footsteps in the empty home.

A special role is given to the original music: tragic and penetrating to accompany emotional torments and bright and upbeat to accompany the soul cleansing.

Dolby Digital Sound Technology

Director: Ye. Krylov

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