SIBERIAN STORY: FEATURE IN DEVELOPMENT
Feature length script completed seeking producers.
Quarterfinalist PAGE International Screenplay Awards Competition 2016.
a film about exile
a film about loss & the ability to rediscover life – passionately
a young woman
a love
Siberia
"You came into this world as the sun set shimmering through the leaves. Remember this beginning, so you will always know beauty and love, even amidst darkness." Anna to her daughter Elizabeta.
Siberian Story is an exploration of exile through a female experiential perspective, addressing timeless existential questions, a coming of age story where loyalty, self-sacrifice and family traditions are questioned in relation to love and being truthful to oneself.
June 14, 1941. Latvia. A sultry summer night. 13 year old Elizabeta, wearing a new chiffon dress, relishes her first kiss with Andrei Slovitski. Twelve hours later she is packed in a cattle car with her mother, Anna, and baby sister, heading toward the Russian border.
Armed men came in the night, desecrated their home, took them away. "Just for a few days", they said. They are deemed enemies of the state, the reason unclear. At the end of the line, Anna discovers her husband, Alexander, has been sent to a labor camp.
Exiled to a remote, impoverished Siberian village, the women inventively learn to survive, revealing hidden strengths and courage. Solid friendships are born dissolving class and cultural barriers, yet ripe with colorful intrigue.
Anna's will to live is sustained by precious memories of the past, a deep love for her husband. Her obsessive determination to find him endangers her life and family. The past, no matter how beautiful the memory, eventually blinds her reason leading to tragedy.
Elizabeta lives in the present. Her openness to new experiences allows her to appreciate the mysteries that reveal themselves, giving her the strength and perspective to remain truthful to herself, to act wisely on challenging decisions. Though fond of Erik, with his bold wildness, she gives her heart to the more sensitive Taras, learning that Life flourishes with Love, but Love can't survive without a trust in Life, the Unknown, a belief in the Spiritual.
(Spring 2018)
