Dae dae keep it moving8/14/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() (c) Sebastian Huber // Mila Zhluktenko and Daniel Asadi Faezi It also has a lot of positive effects for the film itself. I feel that the responsibility of a film is really huge, so it’s always so much better to share it, to be open to criticism and to benefit from a communal thought process where you can better shape your idea because of this kind of reflection from those who share similar values in filmmaking. Watching a lot of films together is very important to an artistic practice where there is this kind of collaboration. There’s always been a strong bond in what we like artistically in film. Mila Zhluktenko (MZ): Since film school, we’ve watched each other’s work, and we’ve also watched films together, so we are shaped by a common canon. As we watched our rushes in the evening, we talked about the structure of the film together and in the edit, we shared cuts back and forth through rough cut to fine cut. When we were there shooting, Mila was responsible for the communication in Russian with everyone on the crew since they were all from Uzbekistan and didn’t speak English. We directed, produced, and edited the film together. It wasn’t ever really planned to co-direct until this particular opportunity. Part of this was because of the language barrier. I told the organizers that I would only participate if Mila and I could come together. Pamela Cohn (PC): How did your first co-directing collaboration come about for Aralkum? How did that opportunity shift the ways in which you work together?ĭaniel Asadi Faezi (DAF): I was invited to Uzbekistan for a kind of competition offered by the Tashkent Film Festival. On a Munich-Helsinki Zoom call one recent morning in May, we talked about their dedication to the collaborative approach and the ways in which the dualities of their cultural backgrounds and dedication to experimental approaches to cinema enhance their ability to see beyond the perspective of just one specific set of cultural cues, thus enabling them to engage with a wider idea of who their spectators might be. Mila was born in Kyiv to parents born in the former Soviet Union and emigrated to Germany in 2004 when she was thirteen. As well, they also frequently collaborate with their cohort from the Munich school.īorn and raised in Schweinfurt, Daniel is the son of an emigrant Iranian father and a German mother. Mila and Daniel met the collective in 2016 in Kyiv. Based in Kyiv, the Collective was formed in 2013 by Ukrainian filmmakers and students during the Revolution of Dignity. Daniel says that: “We have always supported each other in whatever way we could, but not restricted to a certain department, just when a helping hand was needed, a fresh eye to watch a rough cut.” The two also belong to a group of other filmmakers with whom they regularly collaborate called the Babylon ’13 Film Collective. That film won DOK Leipzig’s Golden Dove in the German short and animation competition. Daniel produced Mila’s short film, Opera Glasses / Binokl in 2019, shot in Kyiv at the National Opera House of Ukraine. Mila did the sound work, along with Ali Atif, and she was also the film’s editor. They first worked together on Daniel’s film The Absence of Apricots (2018) shot in Pakistan. Their most recent collaboration, waking up in silence (2023), premiered at the 73 rd edition of the Berlinale this past February, and won the Special Jury Prize of the Generation Kplus competition. ![]() Their first co-directorial effort called Aralkum(2022), screened and was awarded at numerous film festivals, including the Jury Prize for Best International Shortfilm at the 53 rd edition of Visions du Réel in Switzerland. Both focused their film studies on nonfiction and experimental storytelling, and while they’ve worked on feature-length projects, their admiration of the short form has taught them many valuable lessons in how to craft immersive moving image and sound work. Daniel also studied directing at the National College of Arts in Lahore, Pakistan. From the beginning, their disparate histories and common adoration for cinema, helped create artistic resonances and philosophies about art and film that hold everything together in this very rich collaboration. Trailer “waking up in silence” by Mila Zhluktenko and Daniel Asadi FaeziĪbout six years ago, Mila Zhluktenko and Daniel Asadi Faezi met as students at the University of Television and Film Munich. ![]()
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