Korotkoe leto

8-year-old Katya is spending a summer in the countryside in her grandparent’s dacha. Although a truly idyllic summer is an illusion, she is able to pay special attention to everything that surrounds her: the way light bounces off different objects, the texture of grass and trees, the movement of water, the sun and all the creatures small and large. Staying close to her side, the film captures time passing here in the warmest of seasons. The days appear long, slow and full of wonders, but history is also there, and everyone reacts to it in different ways. Children pretend they are officers looking for ammunition on the road, men hurt each another, old couples split up, trains transport tanks and the radio brings news from the front. It’s the Second Chechen War, but it may as well be the one before or the one after. What’s it like to grow up in a place in constant conflict where aggression seeps into everything? In her last short film DREAMS ABOUT PUTIN (2023), Nastia Korkia drew on videogame aesthetics and archival footage to show the depth of the harm that state politics do to a young person’s mind. KOROTKOE LETO finds a new way to capture a similar feeling. (Lucía Salas)

In the presence of Nastia Korkia.

Nastia Korkia: DRAMATIC AND MILD (2018, K), ALMOST SPRING (2021, K), GES-2 (2021), DREAMS ABOUT PUTIN (2023, K)