Kira MURATOVA
Кира МУРАТОВА
Kira MOURATOVA
Russia / Ukraina, 1997, 116mn 
Colour, fiction
Three Stories
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Три истории

 

 Trois histoires

 Tri istorii

 
Directed by : Kira MURATOVA (Кира МУРАТОВА)
Writing credits : Yevgeni GOLUBENKO (Евгений ГОЛУБЕНКО), Renata LITVINOVA (Рената ЛИТВИНОВА), Kira MURATOVA (Кира МУРАТОВА), Vera STOROZHEVA (Вера СТОРОЖЕВА)
 
Cast
Natalia BUZKO (Наталья БУЗЬКО)
Jean DANIEL (Жан ДАНИЭЛЬ)
Yevgeni GOLUBENKO (Евгений ГОЛУБЕНКО)
Leonid KUSHNIR (Леонид КУШНИР)
Renata LITVINOVA (Рената ЛИТВИНОВА)
Sergey MAKOVETSKY (Сергей МАКОВЕЦКИЙ)
Liliya MURLYKINA (Лилия МУРЛЫКИНА)
Ivan OKHLOBYSTIN (Иван ОХЛОБЫСТИН)
Aleksey SHEVCHENKOV (Алексей ШЕВЧЕНКОВ)
Aleksandra SVENSKAYA (Александра СВЕНСКАЯ)
Oleg TABAKOV (Олег ТАБАКОВ)
 
Cinematography : Gennadi KARIUK (Геннадий КАРЮК)
Production design : Yevgeni GOLUBENKO (Евгений ГОЛУБЕНКО)
Produced by : Aleksandr BOKOVIKOV (Александр БОКОВИКОВ), Igor TOLSTUNOV (Игорь ТОЛСТУНОВ)
Production : Profit
Release date in Russia : 12/02/1997
 
Site : IMDb

Awards :
Special Jury prize Open Russian Film Festival Kinotavr, Sochi (Russia), 1997

Plot synopsis
1. "Boiler-House No. 6"
Written by Igor' Bozhko, with assistance from Evgenii Golubenko.
With Sergei Makovetskii, Leonid Kushnir, and Jean Daniel
A man goes to see his former schoolmate working at a boiler house and persuades him to burn in the furnace the corpse of his communal flat neighbor whom he has just murdered after a quarrel.

2. "Ophelia"
Written by Renata Litvinova.
With Renata Litvinova, Natal'ia Buz'ko, and Ivan Okhlobystin
An orphaned girl gets a job in the archives of the maternity home to find out the identity of her mother who abandoned her years earlier. She finds her, befriends her and takes the first opportunity to throw her into the sea.

3. "The Little Girl and Death"
Written by Vera Storozheva, with assistance from Kira Muratova.
With Oleg Tabakov and Lilia Murlykina
An old intellectual tries to explain to the neighbor's five-year-old daughter "all the abomination of her lumpen existence". The girl feeling hurt for her mother decides to poison the old man with arsenic.
 

Commentaries and bibliography
Les enfants et la mort dans le cinéma russe, Macha OVTCHINNIKOVA, Débordements, 2023
Старик и детка, Kseniya DRUGOVEYKO, seance.ru, 2010
90-е. Кино, которое мы потеряли, Larisa MALUKOVA, Зебра Е ; 2007 г., 2007
 
On the surface, Kira Muratova's Three Stories is a harsh, cruel, unjust film: three variations on the theme of the total dismemberment, degradation, and degeneracy of Homo sapiens... The enigma, however, is that this absolutely deconstructivist take on reality is cast in a strikingly harmonious, balanced, aesthetically complete form. However you analyze it, the film evinces an utter deliberateness at every turn-each frame, word, sound, patch of color, intonation... Everything is connected to everything else, and the longer you scrutinize this crystalline lattice-work of a film, the more meanings and ideas emerge. Against the background of the complete aesthetic collapse of post-Soviet cinema, such an artistic accomplishment seems almost a miracle. -Natalia Sirivlia, Entsiklopediia kino

Selected in the following festivals or events :
- Rétrospective Kira Mouratova à la Cinémathèque française, Paris (France), 2019
- Festival of Central and Eastern Film , Wiesbaden (Germany), 2019
- Rotterdam International Film Festival, Rotterdam (Netherlands), 2013
- Odessa International Film Festival, Odessa (Ukraine), 2010
- Festival of Central and Eastern Film , Wiesbaden (Germany), 2009
- Moscow International Film Festival (MIFF), Moscow (Russia), 2009
- International Film Festival of the Commonwealth Countries "Moscow Premiere", Moscow (Russia), 2008
- Retrospective Kira Muratova, Moscow (Russia), 2008
- Honfleur Russian Film Festival, Honfleur (France), 1998
- Berlin International Film Festival : Berlinale, Berlin (Germany), 1997
- Open Russian Film Festival Kinotavr, Sochi (Russia), 1997
- "NIKA" Prizes, Moscow (Russia), 1997