Netherlands Production Platform - Nederlands Film Festival

A Kronstadt
Tale
Van Lieshout Filmproducties
Netherlands
Producer/Director
Ben van Lieshout
Producer Bea de Visser
Producer Hans Eijses
34 • NPP 2008
Synopsis
Nadia (17) lives by herself in Kronstadt on
the naval island of Kotlin, off the coast near
St Petersburg. Her mother is terminally ill in
hospital. Nadia works for a sail-maker,
alongside a number of older women.
Sergei (42), who lives in the same apartment
building, imposes himself on Nadia but
she does not want him.
Nadia has a boyfriend: Sasha (20), who is
in the navy. Nadia likes to look at him when
he is working or playing sports, sometimes
even through binoculars. On one occasion as
she gazes longingly at him, she hears that he
is to be transferred to Vladivostok.
Nadia wants to enjoy their final hours
together for as long as possible. She silently
makes a wish: ‘I wish for us to be happy, and
that our happiness will last a long time’. They
pick up a stray dog and visit a friend of
Sasha’s, Pyotr, who is a cinema projectionist.
As if mesmerised, Nadia stares from the
projection room at an old Russian film, Long
Happy Life (Gennadi Shpalikov, 1966). She
asks Pyotr what the film is about and he
mumbles: ‘Something that used to happen -
people looking for happiness.’ Nadia watches
the protagonists walk through a deserted,
misty wood. They seem happy, full of
anticipation, but simultaneously overcome
by a sense of melancholy. Happiness is evidently
not allowed to last for long.
Nadia and Sasha wander on through an
almost imaginary landscape in the strange
light of one of those famous white nights,
where it simply refuses to get dark. They will
make love once more under cloudless skies
from which the sun has gone.
Then comes the parting. Nadia promises
to take good care of Sasjenka, the stray dog
she has named after Sasha. And Sasha
promises to return when the first snow falls.
Once again, a yearning gaze through
binoculars - but this time it is not Nadia’s gaze
but Sergei’s. He keeps pursuing Nadia, who
has heard nothing from her boyfriend for
months, in spite of the long letters she writes
to him. Nadia continues to wait and yearn,
although she has her weak moments. Her life
has not become any easier, certainly not
after her mother dies. She visits the grave as
faithfully as she once did the hospital.
Nadia discovers she is pregnant. The
women at work are cynical about Sasha’s
return, but Nadia keeps her cool. One day,
the dog disappears. With Pyotr, Nadia
searches for him, desperately but to no avail.
Sergei tells her where the dog is; Nadia discovers
him dead. She is inconsolable.
The first snow falls. Still no Sasha, yet
Nadia indignantly rejects a proposal of marriage
from Pyotr. Nadia sits by her mother’s
snow-covered grave. She sees a figure
coming closer through the binoculars:
Sasha. An image of unshakeable happiness.
But, taking us back to a past that is
lost forever, a song reminds us that great
loss may also lie behind every happiness.
Director’s statement
After my award-winning feature De verstekeling
(The Stowaway, 1997) and the documentary
Petersburg Places and Paintings
(2004), this new feature will be the third project
in which Russia’s past and today’s reality
form a remarkable background for a lyrical,
poetic and occasionally grim story about
a 17-year-old girl.
I would like to make this film with local
actors, recruited from the Marine Theatre
Company based in Kronstadt, site of the
famous Kronstadt uprising on the island of
Kotlin near St Petersburg, during Russia’s
revolutionary period. The whole film will be
shot on this relatively small island, which
was a no-go area until the mid 1990s.
My feature films are based in reality or in
actual situations and my documentary work
is often highly stylised (The Zone, 1999;
Night at the Mall, 2001). The outcome has
always been a merging of fictional and documentary
elements.
This film will use the specific architecture
and often dramatic atmosphere of Kronstadt
and its naval elements. It will be an auteur and
character-driven film with strong images and
natural acting. For me, it’s a film about trust
and hope personified in a strong, magnetic
character, shot in the enchanting summer of
the white nights and the mesmeric wintertime.