The ties between Izobrajaya Zhertvy – Playing the Victim by Kirill Serebrennikov – winner of the Marco Aurelio Best Film Award – and the theatre are numerous and profound. The film is based on the eponymous play by the Presnyakov brothers (presented at the Edinburgh Festival), a dark version of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and is proof that it is possible to adapt classic works to a contemporary setting in a natural and suitable way while retaining the story’s origins. As the director himself said, “The film’s main character Valya feels, like Hamlet, to be living an inner break with the modern world. These feelings permeate his soul, heart and destiny “.

Serebrennikov himself comes from theatre, where his career began. “People often ask why I decided to leave theatre for the cinema, but, in fact, [film] was my true goal from the beginning. From when I was a young child I wanted to direct, then I found myself in the theatre, even though I really wanted to be making films “.

Izobrajaya Zhertvy – Playing the Victim is a purely Russian film, borne of Russian culture and today’s conditions. Serebrennikov further believes that the image foreigners have of Russia is often wrong. “In terms of art, we are always tied to the great figures of the past, such as Gogol, Dostoevsky or Puskin. But today Russia has changed a lot and no longer corresponds to these points of reference. I think my film is an artistic portrayal of what is passing through the minds of people in Russia today: terror, hope, insecurity. For example, when journalist Anna Politkovskaya was found dead not long ago, we had to stop the play we were performing because the lead actress’s hands wouldn’t stop shaking”.

Valya makes his living playing the part of the victim in police reconstructions of murders, when the criminal has already been captured and it is clear will be condemned. Serebrennikov said: “Foreigners think this is something we invented, that it doesn’t actually exist. Yet it does. It is a sad farce that renders this film both ridiculous and bitter for us Russians”.

To present all of this, the director uses a modern and rather experimental style. “One of the particularities of these police reconstructions in which Valya participates is that the ‘scene’ must be shot in a single sequence. In shooting them, we used digital cameras for which our DoP had to forget all of his technique in order to imitate the style of an amateur. And to depict Valya’s thoughts, his inner life, we worked with a series of very good Russian cartoonists with whom we created animated sequences.”