Taskovski Films has acquired Kristina Shtubert’s “Adobe of Down,” which is set to have its international premiere in the Next:Wave competition section at the Copenhagen Intl. Documentary Festival, also known as CPH:DOX.
Over the course of nearly a decade, the documentary follows a religious community in the Siberian taiga. Their leader, Sergei Torop, a former traffic officer who now calls himself Vissarion, claims he is the reincarnation of Jesus. Since the 1990s, his followers have been building a settlement, the Abode of Dawn, on a remote mountain.
Vissarion himself stays at the edge of the narrative. Like planets around the sun, the lives of these people rotate around Vissarion, although they rarely ever meet him. The film focuses on the villages surrounding the Abode of Dawn, where most of his followers live.
Shtubert says: “The subject of the film is an ambivalent phenomenon and it describes it in an ambivalent way. I did not intend to push any point of view onto the audience. I neither glorify nor destroy what I show. The film shows the strengths and weaknesses of a utopia. I give viewers freedom for their own interpretation.”
Shtubert was born in Orsk, Russia, and grew up in Moscow, where she studied psychology at Lomonosov State University before shifting to filmmaking. After working as a post-production editor, she moved to Berlin in 2010 to study at the German Film and Television Academy (DFFB).
Her short film “Elisa” screened at more than 40 international festivals, earning awards for cinematography and acting. She is a creative producer on “Almanac of Estrangement” and developing her feature debut, “Lea” (working title). “Abode of Dawn” is her graduation project at DFFB.
Shtubert produces for DFFB. The co-producer is RBB.
The 22nd edition of CPH:DOX runs March 19-30.
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