DAU. NATASHA
O.V. in Russian, Ukrainian and English subtitled in English and Spanish
This film can be chronicled through scandalous headlines: "Censored in Russia for 'spreading pornography and propaganda'", "The most ambitious project in the history of cinema", "Torture and explicit sex at the Berlinale", "The Soviet Truman Show", and we would hardly even begin to scratch its surface: ten years of filming, 700 hours of material, 400 volunteers, production team and 50 actors living two years without going out on the set where it was shot. A method that makes Aleksey German and Von Trier look like little sisters of charity comparing it to what he portrays: the raw relations of power under a totalitarian state terror in a scientific research center of the former USSR, a disturbing underworld that we know from the hand of Natasha, who runs a bar there.
Direction: Ilya Khrzhanovskiy, Jekaterina Oertel
Script: Ilya Khrzhanovskiy, Jekaterina Oertel
Cinematography: Jürgen Jürges
Editing: Brand Thumim
Sound: Stefan Smith, Rob Walker, Maksim Demydenko
Cast: Natasha Berezhnaya, Vladimir Azhippo, Olga Shkabarnya, Luc Bigé, Alexey Blinov
Production: Sergey Adonyev
Production Company: Phenomen Berlin Filmproduktion
Ilya Khrzhanovskiy
Moscow, 1975. Studied Fine Arts and then filmmaking at the VGIK. He made his debut in 2005 with 4, a film that earned him a Tiger at Rotterdam among other awards, as well as touring festivals and cinemas around the world. He has been involved in the multidisciplinary project DAU ever since 2006, premiering part of it in Paris in 2019 in an immersive atmosphere that combined installation, live performance and projection. DAU. Natasha premiered at the Berlinale in 2020 with DAU. Degeneratsiya. The DAU project continues its path of exhibition under different formats on different platforms.
Jekaterina Oertel
St. Petersburg, 1966. She studied at the Moscow School of Film and Theater, and has an outstanding and award-winning international career as HMUA. In this role she joined the DAU project in 2008, as head of the make-up and hair department, moving into editing and co-directing during post-production. Since 2015 she has been leading another branch of the project, the DAU SFX workshop, where she creates life-size silicone figures of DAU participants