Letters from St. Petersburg
2021 / 17 minutes / Russian with English subtitles
The film is a portrait of a group of young people from the Russian LGBTQ+ organization Coming Out. The film takes place over a few days, when they gather in the collective Triglinki in central St. Petersburg.
Based on the young people's own universes of music, lyrics, and stories, we experience a group of young people who stand by their identity, expression, and way of life in a country that otherwise tries, by force, to suppress everyone who does not live up to the conservative, patriarchal values that the government wants to promote.
Since the adoption of the anti-gay propaganda law in 2013, Russia has experienced a definite decline in living conditions and basic rights for LGBTQ+ people. Police violence, hate crimes, and harassment have been—and continue to be—a part of everyday life for many LGBTQ+ people in the country.
“We enter into the film with primary characters that are rocks and minerals. The ‘desert rose’, a stone of Egypt, opens the film — one formed in the desert which, for unknown reasons, develops into the shape of the flower of its name. A gentle voice of a chemistry student introduces us to two rocks forged differently and yet made of the same chemical composition. We are opened to the acknowledgment that external pressures are fundamental to the formation of vessels: to stones, as to us.”
— Excerpt from We Are, As the Desert Rose. Kelly Krugman, curator, Savvy Contemporary, Berlin.
Solo exhibition | April 2022 | Künstlerhaus Bethanien
CREDITS
Director: Lotte Nielsen.
Producer: Lotte Nielsen, Maria Møller, Penelope Bjerregaard.
Cinematographer: Catherine Pattinama Coleman.
Editor: Louis Seeberg.
Music: Mia Terry, Ida Duelund Hansen.
Main Cast: Grisha, Marina, Alina, Katya, Viktor, Yana, Lada, Alyona, Lou.
Sponsors: Danish Arts Foundation, Augustinus Foundation, Oda og Hans Svenningsens Fond.
EXHIBITIONS & SCREENINGS
Event: Pogo bar KW Institute of Contemporary Art, Berlin, DE.
Screening: Queer Lisboa International Queer Film Festival, PT - In competition.
Screening: CPH: DOX Film Festival, Copenhagen, DK.
Solo show: Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, DE.
Solo show: Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen & World Pride.
REVIEWS
”Det runger faktisk så kraftigt, at man nærmest kan mærke det i kroppen.”
SPONSORS
