Tomorrow

Zavtra

A raw, invigorating and pertinent product of the appetite for protest evident in Russia today.

Even if a screening is sold out, tickets are often available 30 minutes before the start of the film at the box office at each venue.


Image gallery

  • Director-Producer-Screenwriter Andrey Gryazev
  • With Vor, Kozlenok, Kasper Can’t-Take-Our-Eyes-Off-Him Sokol
  • Russia 2012
  • 90 mins
  • Sales Rise and Shine

Voina, translated as ‘War’, is a collective of artists and activists with an anarchist agenda engaging in political protest throughout Russia. They reject the use of currency and have a stated aim to discredit law enforcement officials. The group gained some international notoriety when one of their works, a 60-metre graffiti painting of a penis whitewashed on St Petersburg’s Liteiny Bridge, which towered over the town’s Federal Security Bureau headquarters when the bridge was raised, was awarded a big cash prize by the National Centre for Contemporary Arts in Moscow. Refusing to recognise any boundary between documentary and staged film, Andrey Gryazev’s thrilling vérité project follows founding members of the group Vor and Kozlenok as they develop a plan to make an art statement by turning over a police car. Tomorrow is raw, invigorating and pertinent filmmaking, clearly the product of the appetite for protest reportedly manifest in Russia today.
Michael Hayden

Director statement

The art-group Voina has been well-known in Russia for quite a while. They started attracting my attention when I saw video clips of their actions on the internet. On May 22nd, 2010 the art-group Voina member Leonid Nikolaev, with a small blue bucket on his head, jumped in the centre of Moscow on to a staff car with a blue light of the secret service FSB, and ran over its roof. He then ran away from the officer, who got out of the car. A video of this action appeared on the internet almost right away. This protest action was carried out in a precise choreography against the blue light of celebrity limousines and the powerful, paralysing Moscow traffic. The meaning of this action was quite profound, but the way it was shot seemed too ordinary. Two days later I had the chance to get in contact with group members. At our meeting I offered right away to shoot all their future actions. In order to bring in the necessary newness in terms of documenting the performances. I got carte blanche, I got permission to use the remaining ‘unnecessary’ material for my feature-length film about the group. I set a few tasks for myself. One of which was to find an artistic idea, one that would compel the viewer to believe in the whole story as it unfolds. The action called ‘Palace Revolution’, for example, consisted of turning a police car over. It was meant to express the need for reforms in the law enforcement system, that the existing system needed to be turned back from head to toe. Yet in such a form the action wouldn’t have found any resonance. That’s why the scenario contained a children’s ball, which rolls under a police car. In order to retrieve it, the police car needs to be turned around – that is, the whole law enforcement system. That way the action got an artistic idea, which momentarily many federal TV channels picked up on. Thus the newscasts started with the anchor people saying: ‘A children's ball rolled under a police car’. For me, first of all as director, art operates not in categories of truth, but in categories of artistic idea. And an artistic idea needs to be interesting and emotionally important. […] Another task, and one of the conditions set by the group Voina, was that the film needed to be shot without a producer and practically without money. This was to support the group’s philosophy that living without money is not just possible, but necessary. That way, the film's budget at this point in time is not higher than $2000, which entirely went on train tickets. Over the time of shooting the film some widely controversial actions were shot, the documentation of which the group put on the internet for everyone’s use. That way, based upon rough estimates, some episodes of the future film were seen on the internet more than 500,000 times.
Andrey Gryazev

Director biography

Born in Moscow in 1982, he became a professional sportsman, competing as a figure skater in the World and European Championships. He then graduated from the Russian State University of Physical Culture as a director of theatrical performances (2004) and worked as a ballet dancer at The Igor Bobrin Theatre of Miniatures on Ice, before graduating from the First National School of TV as an editor in 2006, and working under Andrey Gerasimov and Andrey Dobrovolsky on the Higher Courses of Film Writers & Directors in 2008. He has won more than ten major awards from various European festivals for his documentary films.

Filmography

2008 Dvornik SP (Street-Cleaner SP) [doc s]; Nad proposatyu vo rzhi [s]
2009 Lednikoviy period (Ice Age) [s]; Sanya i vorobey (Sanya and the Sparrow) [doc]
2010 Den Shaktyoya (Miner’s Day) [doc]
2011 Generation [s doc]
2012 Zavtra (Tomorrow) [doc]