Days of national cinema held in Tatarstan

Who is Alina Nasibullina?

Tatarkino is holding Days of National Cinema in Yelabuga, Almetyevsk, Naberezhnye Chelny, and Kazan. The headliner is Alina Nasibullina's thriller “Shurale.”

Nasibullina was born in Novosibirsk; her father is originally from Almetyevsk, and she has many relatives in that area, as well as in Kazan. By her first degree, she is a lawyer, but later she entered the Moscow Art Theatre School, studying in Dmitry Brusnikin's workshop, and then graduated from German Sedakov's School of Drama. She has also worked with the Practice Theater, directed plays herself — for example, creating the immersive performance “Karamzin. Village Diary” (during which she studied all the local sawmills). She has appeared in Alexander Hunt's film “How Vitka Chesnok Took Lyokha Shtyr to the Nursing Home” and Darya Zhuk's “Crystal.” Tatarstan audiences remember her for her cameo role in Baybulat Batullin's project “Take and Remember," where she played the hero's mother in flashbacks.

Gradually, Nasibullina began trying her hand at film directing, shooting short films. “Shurale” is her feature-length debut.

She developed the story over about six years, with the Shurale theme emerging only around the midway point (and its teaser format can be seen in the music video for AIGEL's “Piyala”). Once, while in Kazan, she found books about Tatar myths and realized she could use their plots in her future work.

Nasibullina not only directed the film but also plays the lead role. Aisha (stress on the first syllable) lives in a beautiful house with her fiancé Mikhail (Maxim Matveev), writes poetry, is clearly unhappy — one might even say weak-willed. She drifts with the current. Her rare solace is the plants that have filled the house, turning it into a forest. An unexpected phone call tears her from her protective cocoon. And now the girl finds herself somewhere in Tatarstan. In these parts, her stepmother runs a sawmill. Next to the forest. Workers are cutting down a sacred grove, after which one of them, the heroine's half-brother Timur (Gennady Blinov), disappears into the woods. Soon, her fiancé arrives to join Aisha, and it turns out that Timur may have disappeared because he owes money to a local crime boss (Roman Mikhailov). Meanwhile, the workers say that someone has been stealing horses periodically.

The camera that frightens

Nasibullina co-wrote the script with Igor Poplaukhin (“The White Light Has Closed in on You”). Much of the story remains ambiguous. The authors do not spell out all the circumstances, leaving the viewer to infer certain nuances. In general, the plot is far from straightforward, which actively works to build suspense. However, one theme constantly emerges: escape. Aisha once ran away from home, did not attend her father's funeral, and now she is fleeing Moscow, finding no peace anywhere except, perhaps, the forest.

The main character of the film is undoubtedly the forest. Characters enter it, and sometimes return from it. A telling episode occurs when one of the characters, Savely (Sergey Gilev), heads toward the forest belt, pulling his sweater over his head as he walks; his skullcap falls off — a certain symbol of “correctness.”

The forest scenes, as well as the scenes at the floating dock (a kind of symbol of the boundary between the normal and unreal worlds), were filmed in Tatarstan. Anton Petrov's shaky handheld camera follows the characters, recreating all the fear and emotions solely through raw imagery, with no visible special effects.

Additionally, the actors' performances add to the impact. Nasibullina transforms in a matter of moments, suddenly eating dirt, scratching her skin so intensely that the viewer feels it. The girl's husband, rapper Husky, makes a cameo, and his mere presence sends chills down the spine. Another important actor in the film is Gennady Blinov, who skillfully transforms alternately into a macabre character and then into a static, alien half-brother.

Tatar speech is frequently heard in the film, and the actors clearly dubbed their own lines; their sharp accents integrate well into the film's otherworldly atmosphere. At the same time, the mythological layer coexists with a very grounded, everyday story. “She's so evil because she's possessed by a Ubır," says one of the characters. It is unclear whether to take this as a real occurrence or just words spoken in anger.

Alina Nasibullina is currently preparing to shoot her second feature film, which will be about contemporary art and set in Moscow. The director promises it will be ironic.