Detours
Russia, Netherlands / 73 min / 2021

Director and writer: Ekaterina Selenkina
Cinematographer: Alexey Kurbatov
Producers: Vladimir Nadein, Ekaterina Selenkina

Co-producer: Rogier Kramer, Dutch Mountain Film

A sprawling meditation on the choreography of bodies in Moscow's urban landscape, Detours depicts a new way of dealing illicit drugs via the Darknet, the layering of the physical and the virtual realities, as well as a poetics, and politics, of space. Taking place in sleepy neighbourhoods, among the concrete walls of high-rises, behind garages and amidst abandoned railroads, the film alternately follows and loses track of Denis, the treasureman who hides stashes of drugs all over the city.

Festivals:

Venice International Film Critics' Week (World premiere) – Best directing among women under 40 Award | dedicated to the director Valentina Pedicini
Garage Museum of Contemporary Art (Russian premiere)
New Holland Island International Debut Film Festival (Saint Petersburg premiere) – Best Russian Film Award
Viennale (Austrian premiere)
Thessaloniki International Film Festival (Greek premiere)
Berlin Critics' Week (German premiere)
FICUNAM (North American premiere)
JEONJU Film Festival (Asian premiere)
IndieLisboa (Portuguese premiere)
BelDocs (Serbian premiere)

Produced with financial support of the Hubert Bals Fund of the International Film Festival Rotterdam
Eurimage Lab Project Award - Work in Progress, Les Arcs Film Festival 2019
Dacha
by Dina Karaman, Vladimir Nadein)
Russia / 15 min / 2021

In between Georgia and Russia there lies the partially recognized Republic of Abkhazia where no less than five countryside residences of Joseph Stalin are hidden amid the lush subtropical greenery. Their telltale architecture betrays the many phobias and fears of the 'freest' person in the whole empire. The interiors are identical to the point of blurring into a paranoid multi-chamber labyrinth filled with identical beds, couches, chairs, and carpets. A sleepless bunker ignoring the scenic nature around it.

Group show The Hauntology of Post Soviet Spaces, HSE art gallery
AI IS THE ANSWER - WHAT WAS THE QUESTION
a social science fiction mini series
Director: Christian von Borries
Starring: Vladimir Nadein, Valentina Zubkova


A film by Christian von Borries shows surveillance capitalism's dominance over society's laws of motion, it shows ubiquitous architectures of extraction and execution. There was a time when you searched the internet, but now the internet searches you. And there is one place where all the elements of dark data come together and transform a shared public space into a petri dish for the reality business of surveillance. That place is the city, the "for-profit city". Market players with an interest in your behaviour know how to find your body. The psychological power of the rendition of your body is profound. Actors perform the stylized soothing song of disclosure and agreement for the public. In a world increasingly defined by multinational corporations on the analog-digital interface, Industry 4.0 and Smart City are two strategy promises of the present, associated with great hopes. AI IS THE ANSWER — WHAT WAS THE QUESTION examines these strategies and places. Smartness is an indicator of frictionless circulation and in this similar to the promisses of industry 4.0 gradually overwriting politics.

Potosí Principle – Archive, On Smart Paradises, HKW
Danton's Death
Director: Andrey Stadnikov
Producers: Vladimir Nadein, Semyon Berhcanskiy, Tikhon Penduyrin.

The debut feature of a young Russian playwright and theatre director tells the story of the final days of the Dantonists, who represented the right wing of the Jacobins during the French Revolution. The figure of Danton, one of the founding fathers of the First French Republic and its brightest tribune, drew support from among those dissatisfied with the policy of the revolutionary dictatorship and advocated the mitigation of terror. All of them were brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal and executed. Andrey Stadnikov's experimental work loosely references the eponymous play by Georg Büchner, which in many ways foreshadowed the documentary theatre of the 20th century, and draws bold parallels with modernity. The film focuses on the relationship between Danton and Robespierre and the problems of revolutionary violence and justice, questioning why the revolution never fails to devour its children.
Daily News / A Chronicle of our days
Director: Dina Karaman
Producers: Vladimir Nadein
2019 / Russia / 62 min.

Newsreels were one of the most powerful tools of Soviet propaganda. They also make up a significant part of the state film archives. In the newsreels, the recent past presents itself as a monolith of silent images, firmly stitched together by the narrator's voice and soundtrack subtly playing the viewer's feelings. It is exactly this original sound that the artist suggests to detach from. Just two or three minutes long episodes retain the original montage, which was meant to follow the upbeat narration.
Arrival
Director: Alina Nasibullina
Producers: Daria Kashirina, Vladimir Nadein

2019/Russia, USA, Belarus/14 min.

Ten girls are waiting for arrival of the train. Occasionally, it is delayed indefinitely, that spectators are find out from the conductor. Yes, we are watching for the girls from the outside and they figure it out. So they are telling their stories, sharing their problems and concerns, still waiting for the train. Will the train arrive? Where are they going and what are they really waiting for?

World Premiere: 65th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen
Birobidzhan Atlas
Director: Anton Ginzburg
Producers: Vladimir Nadein, Rita Sokolovskaya
2018/Russia, USA/21min.

On 28 March 1928, the Presidium of the General Executive Committee of the USSR passed the decree "On the attaching for KOMZET (Committee for the Settlement of Working Jews on the Land) of free territory near the Amur River in the Far East for settlement of the working Jews", as a secular Yiddish administrative territorial unit. The landscape had a harsh geography and climate: it was mountainous, covered with virgin forests of oak, pine and cedar, and also swamplands festering with mosquitoes, and any new settlers would have to build their lives from scratch in this underpopulated region on the border of contested Manchuria. Birobidzhan is a town and the administrative center of the Jewish Autonomous Region, Russia, located on the Trans-Siberian Railway, close to the border with China. It is named after the two rivers: the Bira and the Bidzhan, which are tributaries of the Amur. The city was planned by the Swiss Bauhaus architect Hannes Meyer, and established in 1931.