Marie-Odile Gazin

The House

The house referenced in the title is an old building, whose past splendour is recognisable despite the apparent lack of upkeep. This enormous house, in the middle of the forest, was a health cure site that Casanova and Voltaire apparently visited in their time. The spring was blocked and Nestlé, which was using it, closed the house.

Guests

Three Tajik brothers, Ali, and Kamil Fedor, settled 150 km from Moscow in a makeshift hut, hidden behind a fence. Their life is hard, they speak Russian poorly and live away from their families. Their job is to cut and transport the wood from the forest next door. Every day life is punctuated by the hard work, the daily tasks, card games, drinking and bickering with the Russians in the neighboring village. The film speaks of economic exile, bitter life out of another time, double family for some, and the feeling of not quite here nor longer quite out there…

Sleeping Souls

Atchinsk, 4000 km from Moscow. In a building in this Siberia town, the residents cross paths in the stairs, not prone to discuss the current campaign to elect the next president.. Outside, the city lives by the rhythm of the cold, only the sound of the radio echos the anti-governemant protests of the capital. Those images of a sleeping town blend with some of the salaried-militants of Poutine's party. Iouri, political mercenary for united Russia coldly explains to me the mechanic of the system. The mise en scène of democratic life becomes a theater…