Mama

Yelena and Nikolay Renard, new, promising voices in Russian cinema, have made fiction out of a real-life story, using a minimal plot that focuses on the complicated relationship between a mother and her obese forty-year-old son. They live together in a humble flat, as she does not give him the opportunity to live his own life. Her overbearing love has driven him into his own imaginary world, in which he is in love with a mannequin in a nearby boutique. Day by day, the mother gets more irritated by her son: because he is fat, because he snores, because of his pure existence… until the son decides to leave her and go live with his father. She helps him pack, but does not wake him in the morning in time to catch his plane.
All of the characters are played by non-actors, except for the mother. The film is shot in a very realistic way, with long, static shots that register each scene without editing. This is intended to evoke a feeling in the audience that they are witnesses in real time, or are a part of these still-life scenes, with the huge sculpture of the son’s body in the centre of it all. To be even more realistic, the film makers used no artificial lighting, colour corrections or especially composed film music.
We are witnessing a drama of two people who are trapped, sharing their lives in a few square meters, without being able to escape. Made for 8000 dollars.

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