Stop-Zemlia

Kateryna Gornostai's first feature takes place in the final year of an ordinary school in Kyiv. Masha is sixteen, spends her time with her friends Yana and Senia, and her interest in her classmate Sasha pushes her outside her habits. The film builds no plot; it collects moments in corridors, at parties and between lessons. Interviews shot in documentary form are set among them, with the teenagers talking to camera about loneliness, friendship, sexuality and anxiety, and these sections interleave with the fiction. Most of the cast are not professionals and the performances came out of a long workshop process. It won the Crystal Bear in the youth section in Berlin, the first Ukrainian film to do so. Who it's for: viewers who like realistic, slow films about adolescence. Who it's not for: anyone expecting plot and resolution; the film records a condition rather than telling a story.