review
Daria Belova is a Russian director who settled in Berlin a few years ago. This is undoubtedly the starting point of her award winning short film Come and play, which recalls her memories and first impressions on her arrival in the German capital. A lonely child plays in a park with a false gun to an imaginary “war game”, when suddenly his imagination becomes real, delivering him tothe tanks and the explosions in an apocalyptic Berlin, where borders between past and present no longer exist. The first images of the short film show the main character, Grishka, drawing a child on a steamed window, which under the effect of the air fades away: a premonitory disappearance that signs the end of innocence.
had many images coming separately. I assembled like a mosaic. I wanted to create a dream or a memory: Many layers are not clear or very logically related, but it all stays together. How did you work with the quotes? For example, to me, the scene with the hands on the tree relates to Cocteau? The hands on the trees and Cocteau? It was unconscious, we were shooting and this idea came to me, I did not think about it while doing it. Afterwards, you can also see Polanski and Repulsion in it. It was important for me to work with quotes of black and white films about the war and its perception through children´s eyes. I was thinking of Paesa, Ivan’s Childhood etc. I wanted to follow these films at the beginning, on a visual aspect, and then to break them from the inside.
The horror of the war superimposed on the violence of human relationships condemns the little boy to humiliation and dehumanization. No matter where Grishka runs to, each place leads him further into the absurdity of the war, like this man who literally tries to go inside a wall. As for this man and the Loreley which Grishka recites the poem at the beginning of the film, there will be no exit for him, except death. Through a poignant and beautiful aesthetic, obviously inspired by Tarkowski’s Ivan’s childhood, Belova depicts Berlin as a symbol of the painful history of humanity. She carries out a very dark reflection on the weight of history on humans beings: the story of a city taken hostage by a past that does not let go.
interview
Visions of War spring from everywhere. Soldiers, a ground covered with dead bodies, Grishka seems locked up in the past of the city: powerful black and white war imagery spreads under our eyes that seem to be coming straight from Second World War archives.
The frequent return to panoramic and long side dollies in the park plunges us into a labyrinthine space where the trees, shot with a long angle at the same height as Grishka, unveil a threatening and dominating nature.
review by Leila Hamour // interview by Cécile Tollu-Polonowski // photo by Fernando Vasquez // Nisimazine Yearbook 2013 // 59