Apollinariya Limanskaya

It turned out that way from the very beginning. On almost all of my previous projects I handled a lot of things myself, because directing is a profession that already combines many different responsibilities. Since I started trying to shoot films even before I entered film school and before I studied the hierarchy and positions on a set, in many ways I simply didn’t understand what I “should” or “should not” be doing.

I simply filmed because I wanted to — I wanted to make movies. And when you are just starting out, you don’t have the right people around you. You think: “Alright. There is me and two or three of my friends. I’ll take on this responsibility, this one, and this one; one friend will take another task, and someone else will take another.”

As I began making student films (study exercises and short films), it often happened that the people I would have been satisfied with in terms of work and creativity simply weren’t there. For example, I always had a big problem with production designers. For a long time I couldn’t find the right person who would be as involved in the work process as I was, and who also had a solid artistic background — someone who could work with composition, props, and so on. So I realized that until I found the right person, it would simply be easier to do everything myself.

Vasilina (Vasilina Stupilitte, the production designer of Lyubove is gone) had been my assistant on one of my student projects several years ago — I was working as a production designer on my classmate’s film. I saw that she worked very well and had a strong sense of what a good production designer should feel and understand. So I told her: “Let me teach you everything, and you will become the production designer on Domino (a project that preceded Lyubove is gone).” That’s how Vasilina became a full production designer first on one of my projects and later on Lyubove is gone as well.

Along with Vasilina, the production design was also handled by two others: myself and Valeria Eliseeva. Vasilina was finishing her studies at the institute and, unfortunately, was not able to be present for the second block of the film. Valeria replaced her for a couple of shooting days, and most of the rest was mainly done by me, because the deadlines were pressing and it was impossible to find a suitable person.

It is important to take into account that student filmmaking does not imply any salary for crew members, because it is usually financed with the director’s personal funds, and personally it has always been easier for me to do everything myself rather than spend energy searching for and persuading people to work for me “for free.” Of course, in the future, in serious filmmaking, this is not something I would want, because the older and more experienced you become, the more you need to focus on the director’s tasks and not be distracted by other people’s responsibilities.
We had the same situation with the costume designer on the film. There was a girl with whom we had agreed on everything and who was comfortable with the working conditions with us, but because of health problems she had to leave the project literally a couple of days before the start of filming. We did not have time to find a costume designer who would be well oriented in the historical period and who would be willing to work without pay, so I took everything on myself. By the time we were working on the script I was already very well oriented in the costumes of that period; besides, a large part of the clothing had been brought by me from my own grandparents, so I could prepare all the looks in advance at night before the shooting days and hang them according to the characters, so that on set I would simply hand out labeled bags to everyone and that would be it.

It is important to clarify that in both the production design department and the costume department I had assistants — beginner crew members who had never tried themselves in these positions before but really wanted to (mostly students from my own institute in their first years who needed experience working on a film set). So I was not alone. Of course, I physically would not have managed alone. I am very grateful to them for that.

So multitasking on set is a forced measure. On the other hand, it gave me many skills; I often work on commercial projects as a production designer. We managed to turn something forced into something useful. But in life, of course, I would prefer to be only a director.

It’s all complicated because there are three separate stories that formed the basis of the script.

First of all, why such a historical context? In my fourth year of university, I became very interested in history. History has always fascinated me—both in school and in college. For another project, which I ultimately did not pursue, I needed to learn as much as possible about the Cuban Missile Crisis and nuclear weapons. Gradually, I came across the Chernobyl disaster, which led me to Perestroika. Through this chain of events, I arrived at the topic of juvenile crime in the 1990s.

Immediately, a story formed in my mind about a teacher with a classic Soviet mindset who lives by the principle: “everything for others, nothing for oneself.” A 75-year-old teacher in a special school, who has neither a family nor children, because she devoted her entire life—as was customary in Soviet times—entirely to her students. And then she gets a new class; these are children of the 1990s, born during the war in Afghanistan. They are almost all fatherless; no one cared for them, no one raised them—they are children born into chaos. Then came the drug boom of the 1990s and the Chechen war. Children without principles, without morals, whom no one cared about.

Initially, the story was very dark, a harsh kind of black comedy. Why Lyubove is gone? Because in Lyubove Ivanovna’s class there were boys who would occasionally drive her to the edge, and it so happened that she had a heart attack. She was taken by ambulance, and they said: “Lyubove Ivanovna, you need to leave work; your age does not allow you to continue such emotionally demanding work. Your health is very weak; the next attack could be fatal.” She spent a couple of days at home in empty walls and realized that she had nothing and no one left. No cat, no dog, no grandchildren, no children. The entire wall was covered with photographs of her students and not a single one of herself. The woman realized that she could no longer stay at home and returned to school. The next day, a difficult boy, in whom she had placed high hopes, got into trouble, which led her to another heart attack, and she died. No one came to Lyubove Ivanovna’s funeral. Neither this boy nor the other students.

For me, this was a very sobering story about the problem of time and the generational gap. I brought this material to screenwriter Lera Grebennikova and my mentor Alexander Vasilyevich Gornovsky. They told me that it was a very harsh story, and it would be better to rewrite it. Lera and I spent a long time thinking about how to adapt the script for a general audience. Our main task, in the end, was to create not a “niche” and complex film—in a bad sense of the word—but a story understandable and relatable to viewers of any age and perspective.

We had many different versions of the script. We wrote for six months; every day new ideas emerged. We put everything together like a construction set. We spent a long time thinking about the ending and changed it several times even after filming had begun. What we ultimately wrote is a natural outcome, the best ending that could exist here.

Secondly, I really wanted to work on a female character because in my previous works the main protagonists were teenage boys. I needed to switch to the feminine aspect within myself. Also, one of the reasons the main character’s age changed from 75 to 35 was that it was easier for me to identify with a young woman than with an elderly character.

In my life, if I can put it that way, I have a pronounced “savior syndrome.” In this script, I was rethinking it for myself. I am the eldest child in my family, and my parents were very involved in volunteer work during my childhood, so I developed a permanent concern for those with difficult fates. This is both my main strength and the main source of all my problems. In the film, I wanted to raise the theme of helping a traumatized person and the risks it entails. To show how difficult it is and that it is a long process. There is little romance in it if you understand how much it burns you from the inside afterward.

The third story, which consolidated all this flow of thoughts into a single script: I grew up and went to school in the Urals; it was 2006. A small town in the Chelyabinsk region, populated by families without fathers—four out of five children either lost their fathers or their fathers were in prison. Kindergartens were overcrowded because women had to work multiple jobs to feed their families and could not leave children at home. The lack of kindergarten spots was one of the reasons I started school almost immediately after turning six. Many of my classmates were already smoking, sniffing glue, drinking at seven or eight years old. Everyone already knew where children came from, figuratively speaking, from around age five. Those in older classes were already using drugs and stayed back for second or third years due to their inability to learn the curriculum. But my primary school teacher was a wonderful woman, Lyubove Petrovna, who never divided students into “well-off” and “troubled.” She never told us to “be careful” with any particular students and never discussed anyone’s adventures aloud. She simply fully involved us in the learning process, leaving no free time for nonsense. During lessons, we were equal. Lyubove Petrovna was, in her way, strict (which was necessary with a class full of troublemakers), tough, but fair and honest, and everyone respected her greatly.

It’s worth mentioning that I came from a complete family and was very lucky. My parents were very principled, righteous people, who could devote time to my upbringing and be involved in my life, so it never occurred to me to join my classmates’ misadventures. I attended a huge number of clubs, sections, drew, performed in plays, sculpted, danced, and began reading early. I simply had neither the time nor the desire to gain new experiences in another way.

In the schoolyard of our school, there was an orphanage, and in our class was a boy from there named Kolya. Of all my classmates, he caught my attention because he didn’t hang out with everyone, didn’t use anything, and was just somehow different. Calm, silent, very sad. I felt sorry for him, just humanly, wanted to take care of him, to be a friend. I was already an older sister at the time; there was a four-year difference between me and my younger brother, and in a sisterly way, I wanted to be with Kolya, with no romantic context, although there were already many childhood crushes in our class—for example, one of my classmates was very much in love with me, but when I tried to date him, he shot me in the leg with a plastic pellet gun, after which I told him nothing could happen between us. But Kolya didn’t hurt me or tease me; it was calm being near him. The homeroom teacher and my mother facilitated our interaction, so we often went out together in winter, skating on the rink between school and the orphanage, skiing, playing snowball fights.

We didn’t really talk; I don’t even remember him speaking to me. Once, my mother and I were going to one of the first meetings with Kolya; I saw him from afar and loudly said across the yard, “Where are your parents?” My mother explained that it’s better not to ask children directly about such things, and that the best thing I could do was simply be a friend without unnecessary questions. Not to interfere, because these details and memories could hurt the person. So I was afraid to talk further with him, we just walked silently. I knew nothing about him. Yet there was no awkwardness from the lack of verbal communication; in childhood, it feels different. Nevertheless, I remembered Kolya as silent.

When Lera and my mentor suggested rewriting the first “dark” version of the script, I began digging into my memories, trying to latch onto something with similar motifs—and remembered orphan Kolya and the strict but fair homeroom teacher Lyubove Petrovna.

I decided to find Lyubove Petrovna and former classmates online to talk to them and learn how life had turned out. Since my father was in the military, he was transferred to another city, and we left the Urals when I finished second grade, losing all contacts. I found pages of almost everyone I remembered by surname, except Kolya—no one remembered his surname. I was told that right after I left, Kolya was adopted and taken somewhere. That “family” turned out to be labor slavery, so he ran away and returned to the orphanage for a while. Later, he disappeared again—they said he went searching for his biological parents. After that, his trail was lost.

At the time of writing the script, Kolya’s figure was very vague and unclear to me. He remained in my memory as a small, silent, lonely boy who tried to escape, to change something, but failed. His vague, mental image in my head allowed me to build the whole story. I wanted at least in my film for Kolya to be okay. That a good adult would appear, who could take him in and care for him. Lyubove Petrovna’s figure, projected onto Lyubove Ivanovna, fit perfectly for this role.

Finding nothing more about Kolya, I made Lyubove is gone. But two years after my last contact with classmates and the homeroom teacher, just a few months ago, I decided to resume the search, this time with the goal of showing Kolya the finished film.

I repeatedly went to my mother, asking her to find my school diaries—they should have the lists of all classmates’ full names. In our family, we have a habit of saving everything. We have many archives, and to find Kolya’s surname, one simply needed to dig through them. My mother kept postponing, saying that all the paperwork was in the shed in the village, and we could only get there in spring because of huge snowdrifts. She asked me to wait until warmer weather, but when I fixate on something, I can’t stop. So I decided to try to find the surname myself. I decided to email my school directly, requesting the 2006 archive. Unfortunately, after a week, I received no response, so I found the school’s VKontakte group and wrote a comment on one of the new posts so that other students and teachers would see.

I sent a group class photo, circled the boy, and explained that I studied with him at that time. I named the surnames of other classmates. “Provide me with some information; maybe former classmates or alumni will recognize him.” At first, a woman contacted me, saying: “The girl you mentioned as a classmate became a teacher at a nearby school. You can contact her; maybe she remembers.”

I wrote to this former classmate; she didn’t respond for a while. Almost immediately, another woman wrote to me. She was a mother of many children on maternity leave, and as she said, she was simply very bored, so she decided to help me search as well. She had previously volunteered, bringing things to the orphanage where Kolya grew up. She had the phone number of an elderly caretaker who might remember those years. We sent her a photo of the boy, gave his approximate age, and at the same time, I waited for any response from the former classmate. Within an hour, I received information about Kolya’s surname from both sources. Fortunately, it was quite rare.

I entered Kolya’s full name into Yandex—found nothing. My mother also joined the search, entered the same information into Google, and news from 2013 appeared about teenagers who had run away from the orphanage. It included Kolya’s birth date, his photo at 14, and his friends he ran away with.

I immediately tried to find them on VKontakte, because Kolya’s page didn’t appear anywhere. Neither in friends, comments, nor likes on friends’ pages. Probably, he ran away with them, and they weren’t close. A couple of days later, I decided to stop searching because Kolya’s former caretaker said he was taken in by a family after school, and he was okay. She didn’t know anything further, as the trail ended again.

I kept telling myself, “Calm down, that’s it, you won’t find more information,” but my curiosity persisted. For a short time, I returned to the search. I decided to share his full name, date of birth, and city in a private channel, and one acquaintance from my documentary studies at the institute found him, apparently on Getcontact, and sent me a number saying, “Write to him; it’s probably him.”

At first, I was afraid to write, postponed it for a long time. It really was Kolya. He told me he was studying law, living in the city, and everything was fine. For me, it was enormous happiness that he was alive. He is already 26–27, no longer a child. And the person I cared about, whom I wanted to help in primary school, grows up in my mind literally in a day. I realize he is no longer a boy with sad eyes, but a serious, adult man, studying, working, living his own life, taking care of himself.

Considering that we are now completely strangers, all I wanted was simply to show him the film. It was important to me because there is a kind of human honesty in letting someone know that you used their image in your creative work. I told him everything directly, just as I have told you above. I worried a lot about Kolya’s reaction, now Nikolay (it felt strange to call him just Kolya, since he is a stranger to me now). He liked the film. He said it was very similar to what he experienced, similar to the story of children from orphanages.

At that point, we made a mature and considered decision—to part ways. That is, not to maintain contact, not to message each other, not to add each other as friends on VKontakte, etc., because we are strangers. Everyone has their own life. I did not want to remind him of a painful past by my mere existence, so we said goodbye. That was when my entire universe collapsed. It’s a kind of fantastic story.

I also showed the film to my homeroom teacher; she really liked it too. For me, they are the most important viewers of this work; their opinion matters above all.

The events in the film’s plot take place in the Chelyabinsk region. In reality, everything was shot in the Moscow region, in Balashikha, Noginsk, and Kuryanovo. Some scenes were filmed in Moscow. It’s not Chelyabinsk, but I’m glad that at least it looked a little like the Urals. I wanted to pay tribute to the region where I grew up.

For my producers, this film was also a graduation project. I presented them with the fact that working with locations would be very difficult, and if they agreed, we would proceed. We didn’t have a dedicated location scout, because that is a separate, very expensive profession in filmmaking, which isn’t done on a voluntary basis.

The school that viewers see in the film consists of several separate buildings.

The first is an abandoned chemical institute in Moscow, the first location we approved. My friend found this institute. The teachers’ lounge, the principal’s office, and the bathroom were filmed there. The archive with Renata Vasilyevna — the elderly woman working with papers — was also shot there. We spent a long time negotiating with this institute. The people had just rented the building and were offering it for filming, and there were many points that needed to be discussed. The building was in an emergency condition. The top floor was completely destroyed, so we strictly adhered to safety regulations.

We also needed a cafeteria and classrooms, which the institute didn’t have. We searched across the entire region, considering nearby areas as well. The whole team was involved in the search — not just me and the producers. The cinematographer joined in, the production designers, the casting director, and the assistants. At first, we searched for old school buildings online, looked at listings, called everyone, sent messages. The school shifts were filmed last, six months after the start of shooting — everything dragged on so long partly because of the lack of suitable locations. We wrote to every school on the lists that matched the description, but nothing worked, it wasn’t successful. We began to consider various institutes, children’s camps, and barracks. We opened Google Maps, typed in the needed names, checked the construction year, and wrote to every institution. We were ready to go to one location in the Kaluga region because it visually fit very well. Unfortunately, at first we got the approval, but then it was denied. This happened often.

After some time, we decided to allocate at least some budget for locations (before that, we had been trying to negotiate free filming), and started again with the same lists and addresses. “Hello, it’s us again, but now we are ready to pay you 20,000 rubles ($250) for filming in your school. Still no? We understand, thank you for your response, goodbye.” We saved a little and thought about offering 30 or 40 thousand ($400 or 500).

At one point, we decided to try to achieve two goals at once: search for special needs school and boarding schools directly. This way we would have both a location and students who could be involved in the filming as extras, which might interest them. In this way, we found a correctional boarding school in a suburban town that gave approval for a scout. We went there, the building suited us very well; it looked exactly like the 80s or 90s.

We went there several times, did pre-shoots, prepared everything necessary, already started planning logistics and setting shift dates. Everything was discussed on a voluntary basis: they allowed us to film in the location in exchange for some financial token of gratitude from our side. But it turned out that the amount we could afford from the budget, unfortunately, did not match the expectations of the administration. We were told: “Are you out of your mind? Goodbye.” From our side, a five-figure amount was offered, but it still did not satisfy them. Apparently, the gratitude starts from a specific figure. Our parting with this boarding school was not very good.

This situation shook our team quite a bit, because we were already about to set the shifts. Nothing indicated that there would be problems or the need to resume these laborious searches. What upset me the most was having to call off the team again and thus disrupt their plans. Inside that boarding school, it was mentally and psychologically difficult to be. The people there were quite heavy, cold. There were many children, but silence in the corridors. Not a single child’s drawing hung on the walls. It was cold, the wind was blowing, and it was already November. The whole atmosphere gave us a lot of negative energy, which we decided to fully process and let go of this failure in order to show the atmosphere of a special school more authentically on camera. Fortunately, this problem arose before we began shooting. It would have been much worse to find out that our budget did not meet their expectations during the shifts. The worst thing in filmmaking is solving fundamental issues during the shooting.

We were standing at a bus stop after a scout where we were rejected, talking with the team about how nothing was working out. A middle-aged woman nearby heard us and told us that there was a pedagogical college nearby that looked exactly the same. It turned out that in this town there were several similar buildings of the same type and year of construction. We thanked her, noted the address, and started searching online for contacts of that institution.

We spent several months communicating with the pedagogical college. We found out that they had a branch in Moscow, and we went there for a serious meeting with the rector. The college gave us their building and exposed themselves to reputational risks if we showed a story on screen about a teacher with a negative undertone, so they reviewed every line of the script. After the meeting, I left thinking that we definitely wouldn’t be allowed to film there. We went and said, “We like your branch in the region; it is sufficiently run-down for the 90s.” This is tactless, unethical. I was prepared to be refused. I don’t remember how much time passed, but suddenly we were told: “Come to the regional branch, we liked your story. You can speak with the director of the branch.” We went there and had another meeting. The director and deputy said that they really liked the story and were disappointed it was so short.

The college, with all the administration and students, was very interested in our film. We even looked for students to be extras, but since it was a college and not a school, the students’ ages started at 15–16, while we needed children aged 7–14 on camera. We offered some boys who looked younger to participate, but they weren’t particularly interested. However, the girls happily participated as administrators during the shifts. They cooked buckwheat with sausages for us, made sandwiches.

Everything worked out very cooperatively. We filmed for three days, and it was very comfortable: no one rushed us, everyone was ready to help. We were full of gratitude. They allowed us to do production design calmly, provided all the classrooms, and we selected items from each room almost individually: a few desks from this classroom, a few from that one, one even from a storage room. The furniture was assembled throughout the college so that everything on camera would be historically accurate according to the concept.

This college wasn’t “run-down” because it had good administration. We textured the necessary wear and tear, because, for example, there’s a scene in the corridor where Kolya is mopping the floors and Lyubove Ivanovna walks past him. We spent a lot of time “wrecking” that corridor. There was a large, bright white door that ran straight through the frame. We needed it to look dirty, scuffed, kicked by children’s muddy shoes every day, with the air also dirty, industrial. The set designers and I put paper tape over it, painted it, tore it off, to create the effect of peeling paint. Then the college director approached us and asked if we could restore anything in the building after filming.

Overall, everyone participated and helped us. At one point, the set designers didn’t arrive on time, and the deputy head helped us move desks—a middle-aged woman. We also assembled the cafeteria from scratch. In the very first opening scene, we had birch-patterned wallpaper in the background; we put it up ourselves, it wasn’t local. On our first scout visit, we saw an empty wall in the cafeteria that didn’t suit us, even though the angle was great; we wanted to add some ambiance to convey the spirit of the time. The idea with the birch wallpaper came to the production designer and me, the cinematographer Vika Popova. Last year there was little snow, so we gathered it in the frame as best we could. We needed at least one shot with a proper snowy Ural winter, so we chose a winter landscape with birches in the background, hoping it would convey the atmosphere of the story to the viewer. We moved all the tables ourselves, all the dishes were ours too; we collected them from everywhere. Some things we textured, some we made as props. In the background, the dishes were plastic, spray-painted to look like metal. We also brought our own curtains and hung them in the cafeteria. Set designers did an enormous amount of work.

The town where filming took place was quite far from Moscow. At first, we budgeted for a bus for everyone. Then we realized not everyone would fit on the bus; there were too many people. Also, there were a lot of extras. We thought about gathering everyone by train, but that was still very expensive. In the end, the crew and actors were ready to get there on their own.

All the stars aligned on this project. Huge thanks first of all to the producers—Natella Arutyunyan and Polina Mikhaylova. They found the right people who were ready to work under such conditions. I don’t know what they told them, but Natella and Polina believed in this project more than anyone else, and they gave this belief to everyone else. I don’t remember a single person on the team who, like in a standard filming process, came and said, “God! I’m so tired. I don’t want to do anything, I want to go home. Everything here annoys me terribly.”

Our producers are very good motivators; they gathered everyone and said, “Alright, guys, we’re going to make THIS kind of film with you!..” Thanks to them, I could focus on the filming itself, without thinking about why people were working for me for free, or what I owed them for that. The biggest gift is the entire crew of this film. Honestly, I don’t know if I’ll ever have this experience again, because in all my previous projects, the crew got very tired and quickly lost interest. We argued terribly, constantly quarreled, threatened each other, set conditions; the entire work process was constantly at risk due to conflicts in the team. On early student projects, it happened that a cinematographer left the film mid-shoot, and we had to finish the project with someone else. Sound engineers and producers leaving an unfinished film—that was already classic.

The team for Lyubove is gone was almost entirely made up of new people; from old projects, only the screenwriter Lera and production designer Vasilina came with me. This time I formed the core of the team mainly from workers, not friends. The rest of the crew was found and brought in by producers Natella and Polina; they themselves are less gentle and empathetic than I am, specifically in a work sense. Everyone they brought understood that they came to work, not to hang out. I, in one way or another, recruited some specialists, and this happened through love and care on my part, but then this caused problems because people got used to me being kind and understanding, and took too many liberties. As soon as the producers and I realized this problem, the task of finding people for the crew fully became their responsibility. I tried not to form any strong emotional connection with anyone; I needed to remain as detached and focused on the work process as possible.

Before I started filming Lyubove is gone, I promised myself that this would be my last project as a director. I was leaving cinema. I wanted to change professions because it was destroying me that it was impossible to work properly with a team, that everyone was always dissatisfied, that everything annoyed everyone. Every conflict felt like a knife to my heart; I physically couldn’t bear it. When we started the filming process, I told the whole team that this was my last film; after graduating from the institute, I would go study philology or history, completely unrelated to cinema. Or I would go into teaching, work with children—I love kids, it’s easier for me than with adults. But when we started filming, and when I began to see the results, I was in shock… Every morning between shifts I woke up and started by reviewing all the previously edited material; I couldn’t stop and thought only, “Wow, this is so cool, this is working so well.”

We continued editing for quite a long time, assembling and reassembling everything so that every cut was perfect and looked good. Unfortunately, at festivals the film currently has rough sound; we didn’t have time to bring it to the desired state before the festival season, so we made it watchable at least. Now we are reassembling it from scratch, writing music with the composer, so the result will be much higher quality than now. I can’t leave it as it is: a huge amount of work has been done, and the sound must fully correspond as well.

I can say that I am proud of this work. Proud of the team. During filming, I realized that I would give cinema another chance in my life. Moreover, the Halo festival is the fifth festival the film has won. It’s very pleasant—a little anniversary for us. These five festivals are very important to us because the whole team genuinely rejoices at each victory. Everyone posts it in their stories, shares it in channels, and each win feels like one big victory for us.

I don’t know if it will happen again with any of my scripts—that the team will be so invested. Now this has become a stimulus for me. It turns out you can write a script and gather a team so that people are that engaged. It gives some faith in all of this. That it’s not in vain.

Moreover, it’s nice that the result isn’t a canonical “artistic” film, in the bad sense of the word. So much positive feedback from people of all ages, from all different backgrounds. I hear a lot of good from the older generation and from younger people, from different regions. We managed to make something understandable and liked by people. We will strive for similar results in the future.

The total budget of the film was 700,000 rubles ($9000). On crowdfunding, we raised 80,000 rubles ($1000) out of the planned 50,000 ($600). We don’t have an exact final budget, so I can’t give precise figures for the rest, but everyone contributed: whoever could and as much as they could. The executive producer, the line producer, the production designer, and even the mechanic all pitched in. The rest of the team also occasionally covered some expenses themselves; I found out about it after the shoot and wanted to reimburse them, but they refused.

The largest contribution to the budget, besides myself, was made by my father – it was a six-figure sum (roughly the same amount I invested myself). Previously, my parents hadn’t financially supported my shoots because they were already paying for my studies – there are no state-funded spots at my institute. For me, it was always important to earn money for my shoots myself, so as not to bother my parents and to remain independent: I worked freelance, photographed weddings, and for some time worked as an assistant casting director on TV. During all five years of my studies at the institute, I almost never spent money on myself or personal needs; 99% of my earnings went to my cinema projects. But for this film, unfortunately, I could no longer manage both shooting and earning simultaneously. The filming process was ongoing, and the money was running out. Strong cuts to the script and the shoots were under consideration, and we couldn’t allow that. The first part of the film was shot according to the full script, the second according to a shortened version – that’s improper; it shouldn’t have been like that. Our family is not wealthy, and the amount my father contributed in the end was quite substantial. My parents came to the set once, watched how everything was happening, helped with meals and cooking. Having seen that everything was serious, they decided to help me financially. My father had saved up and was able to contribute. 

I also want to mention that all family members physically helped a lot: besides my parents, it was my brother, both grandmothers, grandfather, aunt, even the little cousins (I went to another city to get clothes from them, and with my sister and the 7- and 5-year-old brother, we sorted clothes by quality and color, photographed them for mood boards, tried everything on them, and they endured it all very patiently, even though I could spend 5–6 hours going through wardrobes). This film brought all of us together; no one was left out. With joint efforts, we managed to make this film.

I came up with this script during a period of emotional turmoil and a depressive episode. A person whose life is going well wouldn’t think of making a film about a teacher who is dying or suffering due to the death of her child. Overall, this story is quite dark and heavy for a psychologically stable person. I approached this film with a clear awareness that there is no love. That you can love someone, support them, as in the original version of the script, and for that person, it simply won’t matter. But while shooting, so many people got involved and fell in love with this project that by the middle of filming it was already clear that something was off in the phrase “Love is gone.” (Wordplay – in Russian, the name Lyubove and the word love are the same).

While we were working on the script, the ending changed: love does exist after all. Simultaneously with the shooting process, I started a relationship with my current boyfriend. For some time, I hid from him that I was a director, because usually shooting is an emotionally heavy process. Plus, many men are put off by women in leadership positions because of the difficult character required for such work with a team.

Not all friends you invite to the shoot are willing to participate again later. You may even stop communicating, because shooting is chaos, some kind of meat grinder. Do you know Hieronymus Bosch’s painting The Last Judgment? I refused for a long time to bring my boyfriend to my shoots because I wanted to preserve our relationship. But he insisted, saying he wanted to see how it all happens; he was very curious. I warned him that I would be strict there, harsh, that I wouldn’t behave as I normally do with him during the shoots. I wouldn’t be able to give enough time or attention because I’d be busy. I would ignore him; I wouldn’t have time for him at all. He insisted anyway. I thought: if we can finish this film together, it means it’s fate and we really suit each other. That means we will have a strong relationship.

There were very high risks, but we worked through the second half of the film together. He is not from the film industry at all: he works with models, signs, does a lot of hands-on tasks, can fix or build anything. And so that he wouldn’t get bored on set, I assigned him to the art department. He was a production assistant, worked with props, later became our driver, and even photographed the backstage, which the whole team loved. He discovered that he really enjoys photography. During six days on set with him, we only argued a little once, but quickly resolved everything, talked, and reconciled. Overall, we handled this challenge very well. It’s very funny – we have some amusing photos from the premiere where we’re standing together, and behind us is a poster that says Lyubove is gone. Love exists; it’s abundant, it just doesn’t always come to you immediately, and not always in the form of the people from whom you expect it.

How did this film change me? First, I became wiser, calmer, because I entered the process as a rather anxious person. I now have a team that supports me, I became confident that I’m making the right choices in my cinema, and I became more self-assured as a director when I realized that people like my vision. I began to communicate very well with many of the people we worked with, even outside of the shoots. I will continue to work with them in the future. This made me calmer. And, of course, more mature.

In my previous films, if I couldn’t change something, I would get terribly anxious. For example, if a shoot day is canceled – and this happens very often in cinema, when a shoot day falls through at the last minute. Here I just worked by the principle: “I won’t stress about what I cannot change.” That is, if a day is canceled, it means it’s meant to be. Fine, we’ll process it, maybe get upset, get angry, but it means it’s for the best.

All circumstances that occurred were always for the better. That is, when you change your mindset in that direction, life becomes much easier. Of course, there are situations when you are terribly dissatisfied with what happened, why it happened at all. But in the end, after some time, you come back and realize: it’s good that it happened this way. It’s better for the film, for the final result.

Of course, there were some difficult moments, but over time they fade. Your mindset and attitude change, and you no longer perceive it negatively. Nature sends rain on the shooting day? Make everyone in the frame think that this rain was scripted. We followed this principle and tried to turn all problems that arose in our way 180°, so that everyone would later think that this was meant to be.

The idea was born in the fall of 2023. By winter, I already had the first draft of the script. We started working with the screenwriter, writing for six months. Then we had another six months of pre-production with the team, and the shooting process itself also took six months. There were a total of 11 shooting blocks, the last one in June. Post-production, roughly, started in June 2025.

There were scenes that didn’t make it into the edit, yes, but we cut them not because they didn’t fit, but because we didn’t fit the runtime. Festivals have regulations specifying that a short film must not exceed 25 minutes. The cut scenes didn’t really affect the story; they were mostly visual additions to convey the atmosphere. But even without them, we think everything was successfully shown.

We decided to make one version of the film. Everything is already perceived as a whole. So the version that will be published is the one currently circulating at festivals, except it will be slightly higher quality and cleaner in sound.

Lyubove is gone will appear online in the early fall of this year. We are negotiating with an online cinema platform and hope to sign a contract.

It’s on a non-commercial basis. I don’t know if it’s even possible to receive any kind of royalties from a student film. Platforms and online cinemas are not interested in taking such formats, and we still have to prove to them that our film should be available online. For all of us, the very fact that our film is on an online cinema platform is already a big pride and a good start. Some serious, adult people in the industry will see it and may become interested in specific people with whom they want to collaborate in the future. It’s a platform for publicity, so to speak.

I have several full-fledged ideas in the form of applications and synopses. I already tried looking for financing and production for these projects in the fall of 2025, but unfortunately, the producers I contacted didn’t find these stories suitable. Which of these ideas will become my debut feature is still unclear. The first six months after graduation were very hard for me. I gained the motivation to work and shoot, inspired by the success of Lyubove is gone, but the industry met me very coldly. I am still without paid work in my field and returned to side work as a photographer. Festival victories did not bring me useful connections in the “adult” film industry; I realized that I need to keep shooting at my own expense if I want to become someone significant in the world of cinema.

The concept of a “young director” in our country starts at 30–35 years old. I am 25 now, so I have about five more years to work on something before serious attention will be paid to me, I think. This “window” and the statistics themselves reassure me—so not all is lost if I’m not immediately taken in with open arms. I plan to spend this time writing scripts “in the drawer” while I still have things to write about and the resources to do so. Maybe something will change in the near future. Overall, I am ready for anything; I will accept any path.