Director Kateryna Gornostai about her film: Masha's story has autobiographical roots. She looks like me at 16 years old. Looking back, I realize that my first experience of an innocent slow dance had a greater impact on the development of my sexuality than my first sexual experience itself. This inspired me to make a film that tells of the sensual encounters of its characters at that age the existential experiences are the most intense. I wrote the first draft of the script based on an everyday personal drama about unrequited teenage love, focusing on the aspect of "life that never happens" that interests me most. For me, it was crucial to fill it with the macro world of the protagonists and the tangible details of their relationship.
Stop.Zemlia emphasizes the delicate and vulnerable everyday life of urban Ukrainian youth, which came to an abrupt end with the Russian war of aggression. The young people's experiences are touching in their open directness.
The director and Pluto Film are asking for support for children with cancer in Kiev: Tabletochki
Susanne Guggenberger
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Kateryna Gornostai
Kateryna Gornostai is a director, author and film editor. She was born on March 15, 1989 in Lutsk, Ukraine, and now lives in Kiev. She studied filmmaking at Marina Razbezhkina and Mikhail Ugarov's School of Documentary Film and Theater and began her career as a documentary filmmaker in 2012, after which she switched to feature films and mixed forms. Film critics recognize her style and her ability to portray life without artificiality. Now she also teaches documentary filmmaking at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy of Journalism.
