10 – 15 de junio 2025

Official Section 2023

A Date in Minsk

Nikita Lavretski | 2022 | 88'

SYNOPSIS

Nikita and Volha have been maintaining a dysfunctional relationship for the past 8 years. In the following movie they play fictional Nikita and Volha who have only just met. Can anything be started anew at the end of history? A bittersweet reflection on Belarus shot in one take.

BIOGRAPHY

Nikita Lavretski
Nikita Lavretski

Nikita Lavretski was born in 1994 in Minsk, Belarus. In 2018 he completed a master's degree in film studies at the Belarusian State Academy of Arts in Minsk. His first feature film, "Belarusian Psycho", won the award for best Belarusian film in 2015 at the Listapad International Film Festival in Minsk.

Multimedia

Critical text

As a dialectical encounter, romantic relationships are a commonplace in contemporary cinema. If we add to this the space-time concentration, we obtain cult titles such as Richard Linklater's "Before" trilogy or Abbas Kiarostami's "Certified Copy". In "A Date in Minsk", Belarusian filmmaker Nikita Lavretski gives a new twist to this approach. Playing the lead couple, Nikita himself and his ex-partner Volha Kavaliova embark on a fictional first date where the real and the fictitious on their lives (and their life together) become blurred as the camera follows them in an impressive almost 90-minute-long single take. Lavretski, a young and hyperactive creator (a whopping eight films in 2022 alone), proposes a mechanism in which psychodrama and social analysis go hand in hand. The logic and intricacies of Tinder, playing pool, Lukashenko, Japanese manga, making films without a budget, the political relationship with Russia and Ukraine, and other conversation topics unfold in a thrilling film that demands new labels to approach it, made with minimal resources (the cinematographer, Yulia Shatun, used only an iPhone to record) and a great abundance of ideas. "A Date in Minsk", winner of the latest DocLisboa festival, is an authentic cinematic ready-made that relies on the spontaneity of new filming techniques to obtain a relevant social and generational portrait. GABRIEL DOMÉNECH

Technical Sheet

A Date in Minsk Nikita Lavretski
Estreno en España |

director:
Nikita Lavretski

production:
Nikita Lavretski

cinematography:
Yuliya Shatun

script:
Nikita Lavretski, Volha Kavaliova

editing:
Nikita Lavretski

sound:
Yuliya Shatun

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