Responses
January 3, 2024
Dear Mrs. Oksana Mysina!
THANK YOU for your honest, sincere, truthful Film, which spotlights one of the most important, acute topics of our contemporary Life within the framework of honor, integrity, and morality.
Everyone knows this eternal, tormenting, national [Russian], ideological question, but for centuries has continued to step on it as if it were a rake.
History, however, teaches us nothing. It only punishes.
The ATLANTIS Film Festival team strives to serve the life-affirming enlightening, creative, ideological art form of CINEMATOGRAPHY.
WE are UNITED!
Light, goodness, truth, peace WILL DEFEAT darkness, evil, lies, and war.
- Yuri Valentinych, aka, Kot Matroskin (the Sailor Cat), founder of the Atlantis Cinema Fiesta.
December 20, 2023
Powerful commentary!
- Veniamin Zaiitsev-Fridshtand, commenting on the film on the Atlantis Cinema Fiesta Facebook page.
December 20, 2023
Very aptly titled The Cherry Orchard. War. In its emotions it is precisely Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, where commonplace life has collapsed, you have no idea how you can continue living on, and you feel you have been shunted off into the margins of life. Meanwhile the Z-people walk by, joyful and confident. And you look at them and you don't understand whether there's something wrong with you, or with them. Thank you for this film.
- Yelena Dyukova, commenting on the film on the Atlantis Cinema Fiesta Facebook page.
December 20, 2023
A revelatory film. A confessional film.
- Anna Bryl-Bondarenko, commenting on the film on the Atlantis Cinema Fiesta Facebook page.
January 2, 2024 +/-
A tragic impression. Everything has been taken away, all our dreams, everything we aspired to. Just taken and thrown away. Oxygen has been cut off. The feeling of a closed space, and it is almost impossible to find a way out. Perhaps you must believe in your purpose to survive. There is space, however, and we must create opportunities ourselves.
Putin has nothing to do with Ukraine or Belarus, but he still reaches out to paw at them. Lopakhin came and cut down the Cherry Orchard. [Moscow Mayor] Sobyanin, for instance, is a man for whom Moscow is a source of income. People have come who will destroy the old Moscow. They don't care about history, about what is dear to people who are from here. These people [Sobyanin, etc.] are outsiders. They came and cut it down. Spat on it, wiped it out, and stepped right over it.
One is a cherry orchard being cut down. Culture is being cut down, destroyed, people are not allowed to work.
There's much talent, but nobody cares about it. Just shut up, pay your taxes and that's that.
There are no elections, no choice.
A closed space in which you are trapped. Everything is dictated from above. There is little you can do, but you are bound and beholden to everyone.
I once was proud of my country, my homeland. Now we are outcasts, and it's a shame.
As for the intertwined monologues of the characters: One accepts his loss with humor, that's his defensive reaction. Another cries. But for everyone it is a great loss...
- Comments made by Elena Sanina's mother after watching the film. We ordinarily don't quote family members, but these impressions shaken loose by watching the film struck us as extremely important, and worthy of a greater audience.