Viktor Kossakovsky

Gunda

A glimpse into the raw and simple power of nature through encounters with farm animals: the eponymous Gunda, a mother pig; two cows, and a one-legged chicken.

Trillion

A woman walks over jagged, weather-beaten rocks by the sea. She is barefoot, wearing a simple white dress. The wind blows unchecked, her face hidden beneath the brim of a floppy hat. She walks and walks, resolute. Sometimes she carries a large jute bag. What is happening here?

Aquarela

From massive waves to melting ice, filmmaker Victor Kossakovsky travels around the world to capture stunning images of the beauty and raw power of water.

Memento Mori

As rhythmic machines press zinc sheets into coffins, factory workers reflect on their own mortality. Does daily contact with death heighten their awareness of life’s impermanence?

Architecton

An extraordinary journey through the material that makes up our habitat: concrete and its ancestor, stone. Victor Kossakovsky raises a fundamental question: how do we inhabit the world of tomorrow?

Varicella

Seven-year-old Polina and her 13-year-old sister Nastia live and breathe ballet. Both of them are studying at the Boris Eifman Dance Academy in frigid Saint Petersburg. They’re currently awaiting their grades to find out if they’ve done well enough to be promoted to the next year, with Nastia lovingly guiding he little sister through the process. But in the meantime, Nastia also has to deal with the high demands that the academy places on its students. The gorgeously styled shots are sometimes calm, even clinical, and sometimes warm, lively and funny.

Losev

Director Victor Kossakovsky dedicated his documentary debut to the Russian philosopher and religious thinker Alexey Fedorovich Losev (1893-1988), who died shortly after the completion of the film.

I Loved You

Trilogy about love, experienced at different moments in life, by different people: an old couple, a young couple and two children at infant school.

Gunda

A glimpse into the raw and simple power of nature through encounters with farm animals: the eponymous Gunda, a mother pig; two cows, and a one-legged chicken.

Trillion

A woman walks over jagged, weather-beaten rocks by the sea. She is barefoot, wearing a simple white dress. The wind blows unchecked, her face hidden beneath the brim of a floppy hat. She walks and walks, resolute. Sometimes she carries a large jute bag. What is happening here?

Aquarela

From massive waves to melting ice, filmmaker Victor Kossakovsky travels around the world to capture stunning images of the beauty and raw power of water.

Memento Mori

As rhythmic machines press zinc sheets into coffins, factory workers reflect on their own mortality. Does daily contact with death heighten their awareness of life’s impermanence?

Architecton

An extraordinary journey through the material that makes up our habitat: concrete and its ancestor, stone. Victor Kossakovsky raises a fundamental question: how do we inhabit the world of tomorrow?

Varicella

Seven-year-old Polina and her 13-year-old sister Nastia live and breathe ballet. Both of them are studying at the Boris Eifman Dance Academy in frigid Saint Petersburg. They’re currently awaiting their grades to find out if they’ve done well enough to be promoted to the next year, with Nastia lovingly guiding he little sister through the process. But in the meantime, Nastia also has to deal with the high demands that the academy places on its students. The gorgeously styled shots are sometimes calm, even clinical, and sometimes warm, lively and funny.

Losev

Director Victor Kossakovsky dedicated his documentary debut to the Russian philosopher and religious thinker Alexey Fedorovich Losev (1893-1988), who died shortly after the completion of the film.

I Loved You

Trilogy about love, experienced at different moments in life, by different people: an old couple, a young couple and two children at infant school.

Demonstration

Remarkable footage of a Barcelona anti-austerity demonstration – and its quelling – shaped into a lyrical tribute to the spirit of protest by Victor Kossakovsky ( ¡Vivan las Antipodas!) and 32 Spanish film students.

¡Vivan las Antipodas!

What would be the shortest route between Entre Rios in Argentina and the Chinese metropolis Shanghai? Simply a straight line through the center of the earth, since the two places are antipodes: they are located diametrically opposite to each other on the earth's surface. During his visits to four such antipodal pairs, the award-winning documentary filmmaker Victor Kossakovsky captured images that turn our view of the world upside down.

The Belovs

Portrait of a troubled peasant family. The film tells the story of two times widow Anna Belova who lives together with her brother Mikhail. Blending the two personalities, Kosakovsky characterizes the true Russian soul: she is the rational worker, honest and strong - he is the drunken poet, the idealist, his philosophy fades into radical nonsense time after time.

Wednesday

Victor Kossakovsky searched obsessively for inhabitants of St. Petersburg who were born on Wednesday 19 July 1961, his own birthday, in former Leningrad. Fifty-one women and fifty men fitted the profile. In the course of time a few of these 101 people had died, others had moved to another community or abroad. But in 1995 Kossakovsky managed to capture on film all seventy remaining residents, in the street, at work or simply at home. While doing so he spent time with doctors and patients, entertainers and businessmen, construction workers and homeless people. In his unorthodox style Kossakovsky has produced a beautiful profile of people in their thirties in St. Petersburg.

Short Plays

Football seen through the eyes of some of the best directors of the world.

Sacredly

In Russian, "Svyato" means "happy". But it is also a nickname for Svyatoslav, the son of director Kossakovsky, who for two years covered mirrors from Svyato. For the first time in his life, Svyato is going to watch himself on a mirror.

Pavel and Lyalya (A Jerusalem Romance)

“Like the right and left hand Your soul is close to my soul We are sealed shut, blissfully and warmly, Like the right and left wing…” The life and art of Pavel Kogan and Lyudmila Stanukinas, two famous Leningrad documentary filmmakers, can best be expressed by the Tsvetaeva stanza cited above. They are the main characters of this film, which their student Viktor Kossakovsky shot during Pavel Kogan’s final months. For Lyudmila Stanukinas, Lyalya, as those close to her called her, her husband was her only reason for existence. She was with him until the end and held onto his extinguishing life as much as she could.

Focus Forward: Short Films, Big Ideas

Focus Forward: Short Films, Big Ideas is an award-winning series of 30 three-minute stories about innovators—people who are reshaping the world through act or invention—directed by the world's most celebrated documentary filmmakers.

69 Minutes of 86 Days

A 3-year-old girl and her family's long journey from a Greek refugee centre to Uppsala.

Lullaby: The Phenomenon of Sleeping Near A.T.M. Machines

The filmmaker Victor Kossakovsky on homeless people sleeping near A.T.M.’s in a bank, a growing phenomenon in Europe.

Kindergarten (First Romance)

The toddlers in a Russian playgroup are showing a striking number of adult traits. Here and there, serious romantic relationships are budding, and some tots are determined to marry. One infant may urge her friend to keep his voice low, or else the filmmakers will hear everything they say, but most pre-schoolers are undisturbed and continue their everyday activities. They play with dolls, hang around on the playground and chatter a lot, particularly about who is whose friend and who is whose lover. In this environment, the direct cinema style seems even more natural than it usually is. Two years ago, IDFA screened Victor Kossakovsky’s film Pavel and Lyalya (a Jerusalem Romance), which dealt with the profound and unselfish love of an elderly couple. In contrast, the infatuations of young kids are volatile and playful, because ten minutes later you can be married to someone else.

Graine de champion

Ruben lives in Denmark, Nastya in Russia, Chikara in Japan, and all practice high-level sports. For one, managing stress and defeat proves difficult. For the other, relentless training is tough, and for the last, not disappointing his father's hopes is paramount. Three sensitive portraits of young champions.

Hush!

The director films the street where he lives in St. Petersburg, for a whole year, documenting the changes caused by the celebration of its 300th anniversary.