The Creative Team
Oksana Mysina - Director, Screenwriter, Editor and Producer
Oksana Mysina's films are her babies. Her fingerprints, brainwaves and blood trails are all over them. She is a grateful and generous collaborator, but it is also true that her films are the poems she writes, the pictures she paints, and the sculptures she makes.
John Freedman - Producer, 2nd Camera
John Freedman has been a co-producer of all of Oksana Mysina's work for Free Flight Films, a production company they created together. John has been the cinematographer on about half of those films, and he contributed the seascape scenes for How to Survive Autumn.
Ksenia Smith - Screenwriter
Ksenia Smith debuted as a writer with the book Our Theater: A True Tale (1999), about her studies with director Boris Yukhananov. She expanded her presence in the theater by writing for, and acting in, The Tale of an Upright Man, a 2004 theater production by Yukhananov at the School of Dramatic Art in Moscow. Under the name of Oksana Smith, she wrote an award-winning essay, "Life, Love, Death and Disability in Russia," for New Mobility magazine in 2021. Ksenia collaborated with Oksana Mysina on the script for How to Survive Autumn.
Alexander Kochubei - Cinematographer
Alexander Kochubei was born in the Orenburg region of Russia, where the spectacular surrounding nature and a loving grandfather made of him a lifelong nature enthusiast. In his youth he also became enamoured of theater, taking his first steps on stage in a local folk theater. He graduated from Moscow’s Film Academy in 1998, having studied with the great Russian film director Marlen Khutsiev. In theater, Kochubei has worked in Moscow for the Contemporary Play School and the Bogis Theater Agency. He made his cinema debut in 1997, and has since performed in over 30 films. His love for film and nature came together in 2005 when he approached the Hunting and Fishing (Okhoto i rybalka) Channel with a proposal to initiate Russia’s first-ever program about spearfishing. The resulting series, The Underwater World of Russia, drew back the curtain on the amazing underwater worlds in Russia’s ponds, lagoons, rivers, lakes and seas.
Over the years, Alexander Kochubei has hosted several series, including, Spearfishing, Spearfishing with Alexander Kochubei, How Our Grandfathers Hunted, Hunting in East Prussia, Riddles of the Silver Carp, Sea Spearfishing, and others. In all he has produced over 400 programs about hunting and fishing. Kochubei has his own YouTube channel, where the top videos grab viewers in the hundreds of thousands.
Sergei Kuchmenko - Composer
Careful readers of this website will note that they have already encountered Sergei Kuchmenko as one of the actors in this film. But, in How to Survive Autumn, Sergei once again also holds down the prestigious position that he has in every single one of Oksana Mysina's films - that of the composer. Sergei has won numerous awards around the world at festivals for his compositions for Oksana's films. But there is a twist to this new film - Sergei wrote a beautiful chorale that graces various parts of the film, but he also improvised the segments that were played in real time before a camera as the actors filmed their scenes.
