Sergey DVORTSEVOY
Сергей ДВОРЦЕВОЙ
Sergueï DVORTSEVOI
Russia / Germany / Poland / China / Kazakhstan, 2018, 100mn 
fiction
The Little One
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Айка

 

 Ayka

 Ayka

 
Directed by : Sergey DVORTSEVOY (Сергей ДВОРЦЕВОЙ)
Writing credits : Sergey DVORTSEVOY (Сергей ДВОРЦЕВОЙ), Gennadi OSTROVSKY (Геннадий ОСТРОВСКИЙ)
 
Cast
Samal YESLYAMOVA (Самал ЕСЛЯМОВА)
Polina SEVERNAYA (Полина СЕВЕРНАЯ)
Andrey KOLYADOV (Андрей КОЛЯДОВ)
 
Cinematography : Jolanta DYLEWSKA (Иоланта ДЫЛЕВСКА)
Production design : Olga YURASOVA (Ольга ЮРАСОВА )
Produced by : Sergey DVORTSEVOY (Сергей ДВОРЦЕВОЙ)
Other persons :
Producteurs : Anna Wydra (Pologne), Thanassis Karathanos, Luna Wang, Zhu Li (Chine), Гульнара Сарсенова (Казахстан) / Goulnara Sarsenova (Kazakhstan)
Production : «Кинодвор» / "Kinodvor", «Pallas Film», «Otter Films", «Juben pictures», Евразия Фильм Продакшн / Eurasia Film production
Film revenue in Russia : 0.0397 million dollars
Spectators : 8 850
Release date in Russia : 14/02/2019
 
Sites : Allociné, IMDb
Release date in France : 2019-01-16, Site

Awards :
Best actress Samal YESLYAMOVA , "NIKA" Prizes, Moscow (Russia), 2020
Best actress Samal YESLYAMOVA , Festival de Cannes, Cannes (France), 2018
First prize FilmFestival Cottbus - Festival of East European Cinema, Cottbus (Germany), 2018

Plot synopsis
A young Kyrgyz girl - Ayka - lives and works illegally in Moscow. After giving birth to her son she leaves him in hospital. Some time later, however, her motherly yearning leads her to desperate attempts of finding the abandoned child. The director states: It began with a dry statistic. In 2010, 248 babies were given up by Kyrgyz mothers in Moscow's hospitals. What could be the reason behind Kyrgyz mothers voluntarily giving up their babies, abandoning them in a foreign country? What could be forcing them to commit such an act, unnatural for any woman? I realized I could not fail to make a film about this: a film about a Kyrgyz girl searching for the child she abandoned in a Moscow-based maternity ward. This film will be about all of us: about what happens when relations between people and their environment reach such an extreme that the individual begins to deteriorate morally, and life forces the individual to re-evaluate and to change, sometimes even against his or her will.
https://fr.rbth.com
 

Commentaries and bibliography
Le réalisateur d’un film primé à Cannes sanctionné pour retard, Agence France Presse, 2020
RUSSIA BEYOND : Les cinq meilleurs films sur le Moscou moderne, Viltoria RIABIKOVA, RUSSIA BEYOND, 2020
« Ayka » : au XXIe siècle, à Moscou, une vie enchaînée, Clarisse FABRE, Le Monde, 2019
Sergei Dvortsevoi: Ayka (My Little One) (Kazakhstan, 2018), Lilya KAGANOVSKY, Kinokultura, 2019
«Айка»: Самал Еслямова и Сергей Дворцевой о фильме, Samal YESLYAMOVA, Василий СТЕПАНОВ, seance.ru, 2018
 

Selected in the following festivals or events :
- Russian or Soviet films awarded at Berlin, Cannes or Venice, kinoglaz.fr (France), 2023
- Festival du cinéma russe d'Acigné, Rennes (France), 2020
- "NIKA" Prizes, Moscow (Russia), 2020
- Yerevan International Film Festival "Golden Apricot", Yerevan (Armenia), 2019
- Semaine du nouveau cinéma russe au cinéma-aventure, Brussels (Belgium), 2019
- Shangai International Film Festival, Shangai (China), 2019
- Soirées du cinéma russe de Bordeaux, Bordeaux (France), 2019
- Release in France of the film, Different cities (France), 2019-01-16
- Russian Film Week in Paris : Regards de Russie, Paris (France), 2019
- Scènes et Ciné - Programme Panorama - Cinématographies de Russie et d'Europe Centrale, Fos sur Mer (France), 2019
- Russian Film Festival, Orléans (France), 2019
- Russische Filmwoche in Berlin, Berlin (Germany), 2019
- Award "White Elephant", Moscow (Russia), 2019
- International Film Festival of the Commonwealth Countries "Moscow Premiere", Moscow (Russia), 2019
- International Film Festival Tarkovski, Ivanovo (Russia), 2019
- Göteborg International Film Festival, Göteborg (Sweden), 2019
- Seattle International Film Festival : SIFF, Seattle (USA), 2019
- Palm Springs International Film Festival, Palm Springs (USA), 2019
- Cairo International Film Festival, Cairo (Egypt), 2018
- Festival de Cannes, Cannes (France), 2018
- FilmFestival Cottbus - Festival of East European Cinema, Cottbus (Germany), 2018
- International Film Festival of India : IFFI, Goa (India), 2018
- Haifa International Film Festival, Haifa (Israel), 2018
- Almaty International Film Festival, Almaty (Kazakhstan), 2018