Short Summer, a film by the Russian director Nastia Korkia, co-produced by the Serbian production company Art & Popcorn, will have its world premiere at the 81st Venice International Film Festival, as part of the selection “Days of Authors” (Giornate degli Autori), which takes place from August 27th to September 6th 2025.
Director Nastia Korkia, co-wrote the screenplay for this poetic drama together with Mikhail Bushkov. It was filmed in August and September 2024 in several locations in Serbia — around Belgrade, Bor and Perlez. The film was realized in the international co-production of the production houses Tamtam Film (Germany), Totem (France) and Art & Popcorn (Serbia).
The main role is played by the Russian actress Maiia Pleshkevich, who lives and works in Belgrade. Renowned Russian actor Alexander Feklistov, Yakov Karykhalin, Aleksandr Karpushin, as well as Serbian actors Vesna Jovanović and Stojša Oljačić also play in the film. A significant part of the film crew consists of Russian artists in emigration, while costume designer Marija Janošević and mask designer Jasmina Mina Lilić participated from Serbia.
Short Summer is an intimate story about seven-year-old Kaca, who, just before starting school, tries to understand the changes in her family, while her grandparents face a possible separation. Although the film takes place during an apparently peaceful summer, the reality of Russia in the period of the Second Chechen War and the terrorist attacks of 2004 is always present, reverberating in its background.
In the announcement of the Days of Authors program, Short Summer is described as the work of an artist in exile that illuminates how war, even when it is far away, penetrates into the deepest family relationships and changes what once seemed indestructible. Korkia herself says the following about the film:
“Inspired by my own childhood, I wanted to tell the story of how I desperately tried to save my family from falling apart. In a world that was then filled with uncertainty and fear, I searched for memories of happiness – buried ‘secrets’ in the ground, under glass and flowers. This story is both personal and collective, about childhood in Russia during the early 2000s, which I now see from a different perspective.”
Before filming began, the film projected participated in the prestigious When East Meets West platform at the Trieste Film Festival, where it won two awards and was selected for the PopUp Film Residency in Paris.
The production was supported by numerous European funds, including MEDIA Creative Europe, Film Center Serbia, Film Incentives Program of the Republic of Serbia, as well as film funds from Germany and France.
The producers of the film are: Natalia Drozd, Andrea Schütte, Dirk Decker, Bérénice Vincent, Miroslav Mogorović and Stefan Mladenović.
Photo: Alina Lugmanova