Film Archive

Zoology

Official Selection - Competition 2016 / Zoologiya / Russia, France, Germany 2016

Natasha is a lonely, middle-aged admin employee at the zoo who still lives at home with her mother. One day her life is turned upside down when she discovers she has grown a tail… A realistically structured story into which the director deftly inserts a fantastic motif in a film that speaks of loneliness, otherness, fear, and also of the courage to be different.

Synopsis

Natasha is a lonely, middle-aged admin employee at the zoo, where her female co-workers take pleasure in making fun of her. She lives with her God-fearing mother and leads a stereotypical existence without any prospect that its course will change in any major way. But this is precisely what does happen, when Natasha discovers one day that she has grown a tail. What’s more, during a medical examination she makes the acquaintance of Pyotr, a young radiologist, and her hitherto utterly dreary life is turned upside down… After his internationally acclaimed debut Corrections Class the young Russian director returns with a realistically structured story into which he deftly inserts a fantastic motif. This is a film that speaks of loneliness, otherness, fear, and also of the courage to stand apart from the majority, to get out of one’s rut and succumb to emotion. In his second picture Ivan Tverdovsky once again confirms his status as a filmmaker with an original cinematic vision that penetrates the very heart of the matter.

Lenka Tyrpáková

About the film

87 min / Color, DCP
International premiere
Director Ivan I. Tverdovskiy / Screenplay Ivan I. Tverdovsky / Dir. of Photography Alexander Mikeladze / Editor Ivan Tverdovsky, Vincent Assman / Art Director Vasily Raspopov / Producer Natalia Mokritskaya, Mila Rozanova, Uliana Savelieva / Production New People Film Company / Coproduction Arizona Productions, MovieBrats Pictures / Cast Natalia Pavlenkova, Dmitri Groshev, Irina Chipizhenko, Maria Tokareva / Sales New Europe Film Sales

About the director

Ivan I. Tverdovsky (b. 1988, Moscow) graduated from Moscow’s Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography (VGIK) in 2011. He shot several documentaries that enjoyed success at various Russian and international festivals, among them As If Waiting for a Bus (Slovno zhdu avtobusa – short doc, 2009), Pianism (Pianizm, 2012), and Space Dog (Sobachiy kaif, short doc, 2013). His feature film debut, the drama Corrections Class (Klass korrektsii), inspired by the novel of the same name by psychologist Ekaterina Murashova, was screened in its international premiere at KVIFF 49, competing in the East of the West Competition, where it won Best Film. The picture subsequently played at a series of international festivals, winning further awards along the way (e.g. Cottbus, Thessaloniki and Marrakesh). Last year he sat on the jury of the East of the West Competition and this year he returns to Karlovy Vary with his second feature Zoology.