A Ukrainian woman named Rita heads for Petersburg to become a well-paid surrogate mother for a gay couple because she needs a large sum of money to pay for her daughter’s leukemia treatments. Igor Voloshin, a highly original Russian filmmaker, once again turns in a surprising effort, this time through a combination of melodrama and a realistic look at modern-day Russia. –Karoly Vary International Film Festival
Igor Voloshin was born on July 1, 1974 in Sevastopol, Ukraine, where he began his acting career in 1992 at the local youth theater and subsequently completed training at the city’s Volkov Theater Academy. He has written and directed several plays in which he has also acted. From 1998 to 2000, he studied screenwriting and directing at the VGIK, the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography in Moscow, after which he made two short films for the Sverdlovsk Film Studio. NIRVANA is his first feature-length film.-www.berlinale.de-
This blew my mind completely, I can't stop thinking about it. What a striking and compelling film which goes to show the very intestinal fortitude of motherhood. Watching this film with openness, identifying with Rita made me wince and writhe in sympathetic agony.
