Women’s Day, documentary, 85 min, UK-Germany-Russia-Bulgaria
Out on UK Digital, 8 March, 2021
Purchase or rent on Sky, iTunes, Amazon or Virgin.
Astounding stories by women born in the USSR - pioneers and survivors - whose testimony reveals their experience from the 1917 Revolution to the present day. Intimate, surprising, funny, painful and contradictory - Women’s Day explores the lives of women living through a convulsive era of historical and social change - the unknown history of women in Russia.
“The director’s ‘outside eye’ revels Russia more powerfully than we do ourselves… No script writer could ever invent these stories”Mospravda
“A truthful and vibrant take on the past - and the future” Time Out - top 9 films at the Moscow International Film Festival
“An important documentary, impeccably researched…” Hello Magazine
SYNOPSIS
Drawing on extensive research, remarkable rare archival footage and access to fascinating individuals, Women’s Day focuses on women from very different backgrounds and achievements. In intimate conversations with the director Dolya Gavanski they express their inner thoughts, fears and feelings.
Women’s Day explores, amongst other things: surviving the siege of Leningrad in subzero temperatures; the challenge of sex in communal flats; how to smuggle forbidden literature; how to fly into space, how to rename a husband and how to perform the perfect Soviet balletic pirouette. Not to mention the political and cultural complexity of the burning of veils….
We meet:
Dina Grigoreva - the famous and irrepressible ‘Voice of the USSR’, who declaimed Communist slogans in Red Square and whose broadcasts were heard daily for thirty five years across 11 time zones. And whose on-air slip of the tongue nearly cost her job and her freedom.
Svetlana Alexievich - winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature peerless clear-eyed chronicler of Soviet life, whose work, brimful of anger and compassion, was - naturally - suppressed.
Elena Krygina - internet sensation and expert in the delicate art of make-up, who finds parallels between the former Soviet Union and Contemporary Botox.
Svetlana Angelina - daughter of the tractor driver and national heroine Pasha Angelina, whose mother spent more time in the fields and in politics than she ever did at home. And died as a result.
Natalya Kaspersky - guitar playing, clay pot throwing, goat nurturing, cyber securities boss and co-founder of the internationally regarded Kaspersky Lab. And the mother of five - one of whom was kidnapped and held to ransom.
Maria Rokhlina - the 94-year-old WW2 veteran, still working, still ‘fighting’, still a passionate Stalinist, who advanced 2670 km on foot with the Red Army from Stalingrad to Prague and whose favourite colour is red. And who loathes the colour blue - it reminds her of the frost of Stalingrad.
Natalya Malakhovskaya - exiled feminist dissident and activist now living in Austria, who still nurtures the battered teddy bear that accompanied her as she fled across the border.
Olga Uskova - hugely successful founder and boss of an artificial intelligence corporation, who muses on what percentage of her is male or female.
Natalya Tomacheva, who, aged 12, was denounced as a prostitute by her whole school because - having seen glamorous pictures of posing Western bathing beauties - donned baggy Soviet knickers and did the same. Her mother, a true believer, never forgave her.
And we meet the director of the Russian State Archives, the Dean of Classical Training at the Vaganova Ballet Academy, the historian at Memorial Society and more.
These women were forged in a culture that had officially proclaimed women equal to men. They had the right to freedom and education, to divorce, the right to abortion and equal pay. They were told they could achieve it all, but at what cost - and what was the reality?
WOMEN’S DAY
Directed, written, produced and narrated by Dolya Gavanski, Thea Films in association with Cultural Solidarity Media. In co-production with Agitprop, Elemag Pictures and MDR
Editor: Nina Altaparmakova
Director of photography: Mariana Kroutilin
Director of photography, local unit: Dmitry Loktionov
Music: Sacha Puttnam
Sound: Svetlozar Georgiev
Co-producers: Tanja Georgieva, Martichka Bozhilova, Viktor Chouchkov, Borislav Chouchkov
Associate Producer: James Norton
Creative producer Olga Nesterova
Cast: Dina Grigoreva, Svetlana Alexievich, Elena Krygina, Natalya Kaspersky,
Svetlana Angelina, Olga Uskova, Natalya Malakhovskaya, Irina Ostrovkaya,
Natalya Tomacheva, Maria Gribanova, Natalya Kalantarova, Maria Rokhlina,
Marfua Tokhtahodjaeva, Maria Rokhlina, Natalya Vasilyevna, Irina Yukina, Lidia Khoroshinina, Marina Kashina.
World Sales WIDE HOUSE
Awards:
Best Documentary Debut Award, Golden Ryton Festival
Best Film (Main Award), DOCK International Documentary Historical Film Festival, Burgas
‘Bitter Glass’ Award for the ‘complex search for truth’, Faculty of Journalism, Sofia University Award, International Film Festival ‘Love is Folly’, Varna
Best Film (Main Award), Russia Abroad Film Festival, Moscow
Critics Award, EuroAsian Bridge, Yalta International Film Festival
Best Film About Russia (Nominated) Russian Film Week, London