09/01/2024 - A total of 34 projects, including those by Kateryna Gornostai, Antonio Lukich, Andrea Pallaoro, Mirjana Karanović, Sally Potter and Mira Fornay, will be presented at the co-production platform
, by working on characters with 25 teenagers who previously did not know each other. As the film premieres in the Generation 14plus section of this yearâs Berlinale, we talked to her about this creative process and about developing the filmâs story and visual style.
Cineuropa: How did you develop your approach to the story and this teenage world?
Kateryna Gornostai: From the beginning, it was an experiment for me, because it wasn t the classical way of telling the simple story through the eyes of one character, and I was aware that it would be hard to balance between the two storylines â they shouldn t be equal. But it appeared even harder when we gathered the whole class around two main figures. A new desire appeared: to give voice to as many heroes as possible.Â
Kateryna Gornostai • Director of Stop-Zemlia cineuropa.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from cineuropa.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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The film does indeed present more of a world rather than a straight-forward narrative, although a central story does exist. Our hero is Masha (
Maria Fedorchenko), an introverted girl who hangs out with two other outsiders, Yana (
Yana Isaienko) and Senia (
Arsenii Markov). The rest of their class does not, however, represent a huge contrast as it would in a standard teenage comedy or drama there are no popular cheerleader or fraternity jock types here, just kids who belong to a larger, more conformist group.
One of them is Sasha (
Oleksandr Ivanov), a handsome boy who catches Masha s eye. In another twist on teenage tropes, it is actually Masha whose family is better off. They live in a modern apartment, in fact they are so cool that they are even growing an indoor marijuana plant. Mom and dad are often away, so Masha and her two besties have frequent sleepovers.
Review: Stop-Zemlia cineuropa.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from cineuropa.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.