Before the war, Mariupol was a depressed industrial town on the shore of the Sea of Azov dominated by two large factories. Life continued and even briefly flourished there after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. Zoya Laktionova’s short films offer a piercingly personal insight into this postindustrial post-Soviet town. Her debut Diorama (2018) shows the bleakly beautiful embankments of a heavily mined sea that used to be full of fish, as audio recordings of the artist’s late mother tell us. This is a place where only dioramas can provide images of a biodiversity already obliterated by pollution. The factories and their impact on everyday life and people’s biographies stand at the center of Laktionova’s second film, Territory of Empty Windows (2020). Completed roughly a year and a half before the full-scale invasion, it tells a fragmentary story of how the artist’s entire family worked at the massive Azovstal steel plant, which was destroyed and rebuilt during World War II. Now, the factory once again lies in rubble after serving as the last redoubt of Ukrainian troops in the city.

Diorama (2018)
Director: Zoya Laktionova
Producer: Nadia Parfan
Cinematography: Zoya Laktionova
Editor: Mykola Bazarkin
Script: Zoya Laktionova
Sound: Andrew Borysenko

Territory of Empty Windows (2020)
Director: Zoya Laktionova
Producer: Anna Diskant
Cinematography: Zoya Laktionova
Editor: Zoya Laktionova
Sound: Andrew Borysenko

Link

https://2022.steirischerherbst.at/en/program/artists/4463/zoya-laktionova