LILIYA TIMIRZYANOVA: “The sea and Homer – as all – are moved by love

In August 2022, the filming for a motion picture under the working title Luna — Lunatiku (lit.: The Moon to the Lunatic — Ed.note) started in Cyprus. This peculiar international project explores the intence subjects and perpetual topics: identity and Russian emigration, peace and love, motherhood and fatherhood, life and faith... Liliya Timirzyanova, a young director, screenwriter, and film producer, has already made an impact in the film industry with her profound debut work Anima (rus. Soprichastie — Ed.note).

The 2021 film tells a story of a mute conductor Anna and a chorister Aglaya, who become the inner voice of the conductor. Critics called Anima a «model example of the new Russian art cinema», and it won several awards at prominent film festivals and received screenings in major cities in Russia and Europe. Lilia narrated to our special correspondent Maria Kingisepp her particular way to cinematography.

In late August, after her recent shooting period, Lilia arrived in St. Petersburg from Cyprus straight to freezing northern autumn for her. We met in Komarovo (the legendary country village — Ed.note), where Lilia filmed her debut film, Anima. Komarovo is her favourite place to take walks and her dream place to live. She took a morning train there and spent the day wandering around the forest, watching the calm lake waters, hugging pine trees, laying flat on the moss, and picking blueberry bushes. Later in the evening, she is sitting in front of me holding a hot cup of mulled wine, her slender fingers cold and blue with blueberry juice. She’s deep in thought, playing with a dozen thin braids dangling from under a colorful bandana. She speaks contemplatively, choosing the words with her quiet melodic voice:

About hitchhiking trips and “my universities”

I was born and raised in a small village in Tatarstan. At 17, I left my parents and moved to Kazan to attend a university. I was eager to experience freedom. I didn’t dream about filmmaking back then — just freedom. And I spent almost ten years pursuing it, travelling and trying to find myself and my place in the world. I studied German at St. Petersburg State University. It was a torment as I knew it wasn’t my calling, and I would learn it quicker if I moved to Germany and practiced the language, not just learned the theory in a classroom. So I travelled a lot. At first, after exams, then mid-term, and then left the university for good.

Before St. Petersburg University, I attended Kazan University while taking guitar lessons and studying choral conducting. I visited many countries over the ten years. When short on money, I was hitchhiking. I remember standing on a highway, trying to get a ride having no idea where or for how long I’m heading. I only had a backpack and my guitar on me. Once I reached Venice this way.

I think my journey in filmmaking started there. So it is a significant, fateful city to me. I love it.

In December 2021, I moved to Crete. I began studying Greek and enrolled in the department of philosophy. I wanted to see if I was mature enough to handle the system, rise above my circumstances and become an inner emigrant. Later, while working on Anima, I joined Kinokommuna (a filmmaking lab at the St. Petersburg University of Film and Television Ed.note).

By the way, it may sound funny, but I find it difficult to watch films. I love music, literature, and poetry, but I see films only as a tool for education. For example, Russian filmmaker Alexander Sokurov tells his students it is better to read many books than watch films. I agree with this view, but exploring the world is no less critical.

In my travels, I watch how people live. Living with locals in a foreign country, you see their life as it is, barefaced. It allows you to forfeit the image created by tourist brochures, mass media, and the Internet to base your perspective on reality. It is a great way to immerse yourself in the culture, just like hitchhiking. It connects you to a variety of strangers and personalities. You communicate with each stranger to feel the humanity in them.

I’m a permanent guest. Being a guest trains your intuition, the essential tool for a director, followed by life experience. When you see the beauty of people and nature, it captures you and makes you want to share this beauty with others. At first, you share it with your friends or mother over social media or telephone, but this craving only gets bigger. I used to have a blog online. In my posts, I would talk about my travels, exciting encounters, and places, but the message was that even a small change, like a different route to work, may become a catalyst for personal growth. My readers’ reaction to my posts was very inspiring. And though I stopped blogging a while ago, people still reach out to me to share their travel experiences.

About music and love

Music was the starting point for my journey toward filmmaking. I have always wanted to become a musician. Out of all places I studied, the music school was the most special. It gives you a freedom that is difficult to describe but easy to feel. It also was where I met the person I fell in love with. I tried to find an alternative way to express my love because words were not enough.

It happened in Venice; I took a baroque singing course and attended the Venice Film Festival. Back then, I didn’t have any aspirations or knowledge related to filmmaking, but I did have a rough script for a film dedicated to the person I loved. I showed it to a French producer who invited me to Paris. I wouldn’t even call that “script” a film synopsis (I wasn’t even familiar with the term at that point); it was just a draft, an outline, and very brief. The story was strongly connected to St. Petersburg, and the producers were ready to invest in it, make a teaser, and insist on filming to be held in St. Petersburg. By the time I returned to St. Petersburg my love drama had turned into tragedy. I couldn’t bear to get emotionally involved in it any deeper and declined the offer.

In 2019 I attended the Diaghilev Festival, where I got acquainted with Teodor Currentzis and his orchestral and choir ensemble “musicAeterna” and discovered byzantine music, which affected me profoundly and pushed me to visit Greece for the first time.

For some reason, many people were telling me incredible stories about Ikaria, a Greek island in the Aegean Sea. It is famous for being timeless, the isle of long-livers. I was fascinated by it and wanted to visit this place. One day I was playing the guitar on the streets of Crete and met an Ikarian man. We went to Ikaria together. While travelling across the Aegean Sea, I almost felt like Odysseus; it was incredible. Once I saw the island, I decided: I wanted to make films. I remember that moment perfectly well. At that point, so much beauty accumulated inside of me that I had to share it, and it finally culminated in the initial craving for filmmaking. But, unfortunately, I didn’t have a camera, so I started filming everything with my phone.

Then I went to Salzburg to see an opera conducted by Teodor Currentzis. There, in Salzburg, the craving manifested itself in full. That evening I rode a bike to a mountain. In that part of Austria, there are no clear skies in the Summer, it’s always raining, and the fog and the sky feel even heavier than in St. Petersburg. In the mountains, I got drenched, laid down on a giant rock (it felt like I was the rock’s skin), and decided to make films. That moment I also remember well.

The following day I got my first camera. The simplest camera, but I still have it and use it to film various sketches.

After that, I returned to St. Petersburg and started filming Anima.

About the first film and the first casting

During my preparations for the first film back in the winter of 2020, I lacked any knowledge, experience, or connections. But I was looking for crew members, and they were finding me miraculously.

At first, the role of the conductor was given to one of the soloists from the “musicAeterna” orchestra. But in the middle of our rehearsals, the pandemic struck happened, and we had to postpone the filming. I was devastated. It felt like the whole world had collapsed. But I am very grateful for this forced pause. It allowed me to think things over, rethink and reform everything. Now, I realise that it wouldn’t lead anywhere if I were to start filming then. So, I rewrote the script and changed the team in general, from cameraman to actors. Unfortunately, things were not working out with the first team, so we parted our ways.

I spent the lockdown in Tatarstan with my parents. In June, I returned to St. Petersburg and, within a month, prepared everything. I started searching on the Internet and found my camera person, Xenia Selvian. She is a Russian State University of Cinematography graduate and is exceptional at her job. It was a fateful connection. We clicked so well that we’re now workingon a new project.

I cast Alina Korol as the conductor. She is an actor with SHT (Social and Artistic Theatre, founded by the graduates of the outstanding drama educator Larisa Gracheva — Ed.note). I found in Italy Ed.note) and still appears in cinemas across Russia, for example, in Mos cow and Novosibirsk this autumn.

Alisa on Kinolift (a web service for actors Ed.note) and fell in love with her face. It affected me so much that I had no doubts about casting her and only her, no matter what.

In November, we found an actor for the role of the chorister and spent six months rehearsing with her, but we had to split three weeks before the shooting began. Yet again, I thought it was the end but decided to hold a casting call.

Many excellent actors from theatres all across St. Petersburg attended the audition. The last was Elizaveta (Liza) Shakira, a St. Petersburg University of Film and Television graduate.

About epitomes and valuable lessons

My new project, Luna – Lunatiku, which began filming in Cyprus in August, has been a work in progress for the past two years: the idea was born right after the shooting for Anima wrapped up.

The initial plan was to shoot the film in Crete. The island is one of the main characters of the film. I also knew from the beginning that the story would

We filmed the auditions, and the number of good actors made me doubt myself. I asked my fellow directors for help, and everyone’s opinions differed. I went to Komorovo and laid down on a tree. It immediately downed on me that Liza was the right fit. I have never regretted that decision. I adore Liza, and we enjoy a very cordial relationship. She is talented, gentle, tender, and vulnerable. I would love to work with her in the future.

We filmed Anima here, in Komarovo, in just four days and without a budget. It was screened at many film festivals (Anima premiered at the Russian Cinema and Theater Festival Amur Autumn and won the Gran Premio Asolo at the Asolo Art Film Festival feature two main female characters: a Russian and a Greek. I met Ksenia Plyusnina at the casting call for Anima. After that, I followed her work in SHT, and we worked on Videokniga (lit. Video book, the SHT project dedicated to its founder Larisa Gracheva Ed.note).

Before I moved to Greece, I visited the country several times looking for my muse, an actress, to play the Greek woman. Her name is Sappho. But my character doesn’t have much in common with the legendary historical character (Sappho is an ancient greek poet and musician Ed.note). For me, it contains a lot of different things. An epitome, a collective image — that’s the right word here. Unfortunately, I failed to find a Greek actor in Greece. Instead, I found her at the Salzburg Festival, in Mozart’s Don Giovanni (a 2021 Perm Tchaikovsky Opera and Ballet Theatre production by Teodor

Currentzis and Romeo Castellucci Ed. note).

Among the 150 Don Giovanni’s women on stage, I saw a beautiful young lady Safira Robens of the Burgtheater (Vienna). It is an incredible story, I met her in between rehearsals, added her on Instagram, and noticed that she had the so-called Sappho fresco from Pompeii set as her profile picture, and we became friends.

When I returned to St. Petersburg, I realised I should cast Safira as Sappho. So I discussed it with her, and I started working on the script that would reflect Safira herself. The first filming trip to Cyprus lasted two weeks. We tried to complete location scouting, find extras and shoot 60 pages worth of script in a short time. It was a challenging experience because while at the moment you want everything, you want it here and now. It turns out slow, and steady wins the race. It was an important lesson: I need to learn to act slower and dig deeper. For me, the most important link in filmmaking is the team. My team is my family. Ksenia Selvian, the camera operator, Alexander Vanyukov, the sound the production in Cyprus are also our coauthors, as nothing would be possible without them.

It includes behind-the-scenes help. For example, the wonderful Marina from Ukraine accommodated us during the shooting process. Many people offered us their animals, boats, houses, and locations, and others assisted us with transportation. There were singers and dancers, lovely woma n Maria, who allowed her three-year-old daughter to star in the film. This film is all about love, light, peace, and trust.

We intend to expand our family for the second step of the shooting process. We want to involve more people as crew members and as extras: locals, older people, children, their parents, shepherds, and fishermen. It will help our wish to share beauty with the world come true. At first, we share it among ourselves and our team, and after that with the rest of the world.

P.s. about the dream

I have an idea for my third film. For a long time, I’ve been dreaming of creating a silent movie accompanied director, Ksenia Afanasyeva, the assistant director — are my rightful co-authors and, more importantly, people I love and value not only as professionals but as personalities. All people who assisted by live music. Filming will take place in Crete. There will be just music and dance. Words, both in cinema and real life, don’t always help but more often hinder.

At that time, I didn’t think that Safira would become my Sappho because I was attached to the idea of a Greek actor. Safira is mixed but not Greek: her grandmother is from Angola, her father is German, and her mother comes from Portugal. She speaks six languages fluently. Safira is a very talented, educated, and interesting person. She studied philosophy in Paris and graduated from one of the best European acting schools in Vienna.

Last September, when visiting Russia, I tried vipassana for the first time. It was a ten-day event dedicated to spiritual practice, where I attended day-long meditation sessions.