So out of more than 3000 films the selection comity of the festival picked 15 to compete in the section “Cineasti del presente”, which shows first features.

Alena Lodkina’s film is set in Australia and is the story of Eva, a young film student with a Russian background and Mia, an gloomy artist. Eva meets Mia on a film set and first talks to her at a party.

She soon moves in with her and starts spying on her. Mia has lost her older sister, who was also called Eva. Somehow she seems to be haunted by the ghost of her sister. Eva sees that her friend is troubled and follows her to a hypnotist. Eva herself sees strange things. Sometimes there are two Evas on screen like a reflection.

The film shows us young people trying to realise their dreams: Eva wants to shoot her first film, Mia wants to live « for real ». Mia keeps talking about people being vain and trying to appear generous and loved just for their vanity.

Lodkina’s Film is a nice “tableau” of today’s young generation in a first world country (Australia). Most of them don’t really struggle because their parents have plenty of money. In Eva’s case the fact that she’s Russian isn’t too much of a handicap. Her mother says she dreams of Putin chasing her and removing his pants and Eva works for an old Russian woman form St. Petersburg to make some money.

The cinematography of the film is often breathtaking: wonderful, wild nature, sea, beaches, mangroves, beautiful interiors and well selected locations in and around Melbourne make those who don’t know it (myself included) discover a bit of Australia. Besides the pretty locations the mise en scène is quite aesthetic. The characters often wear extravagant clothes and jewelry. I won’t say what happened in the end, only that I thought it was very poetic and peaceful.