PODCAST | Bénédicte Prot interviews Sergey Dvortsevoy, director of the film Ayka.

To listen to the interview, click on the ► icon on the right, just above the picture

One of the last movies to screen in competition in Cannes this year was Ayka. As he exited the gala screening of the film, FRED met with Kazakh filmmaker Sergey Dvortsevoy, already awarded in Cannes in 2008 (Prix Un Certain Regard for Tulpan), to ask him about the painstaking journey of the title character, also experienced by the viewer, and the rhetorics of the body in relation to repulsion (well accentuated by the sound work), which seems to corroborate a discourse on the rejection of the foreign body or organ, by the young mother in denial as well as by the Russian society towards the Kyrgyz illegal that she is. Starring Samal Yeslyamova – Award for Best Actress, Cannes 2018.

Ayka just gave birth. She can’t afford to raise a child. She has no job, debts to be paid, not even a room of her own. But there is no way to suppress her natural instincts.