The Winter Garden's Tale

Simon Mozgovyi / Ukraine / 2018 / World Premiere / 75 min.

synopsis

Valentina Voronina, gardener and tenacious manager of a large conservatory, is fired after forty-five years on the job. Time is winning in its unequal battle with a lack of financing, a decaying building, and the approach of retirement age. The dilapidated conservatory reflects the weakening strength of its distinctive manager and visionary. The conviction that the plants will die if nobody looks after them, is intertwined with the appearance of esoterics and a shaman with a divining rod who discovers a spring of positive energy in front of the building’s entrance. Palm fronds rustle like a silent witness to the melancholic struggle against time and the relentlessness of decay. Another cruel winter is on the horizon.

"It is built on its own internal rhythm without the author’s direct speech. Just rethought reality, placed in ironical and a little magic conditions with the main conflict between dreams and reality. " S. Mozgovyi

biography

Actor/director Simon Mozgovyi (1992) studied directing at the Kharkiv State Academy of Arts. After graduating in 2013, he went on to study dramaturgy at the Intel School in Kyiv, where he is currently active as an actor and freelance director at the DACH Theater. The Winter Garden’s Tale is his first feature-length documentary.

more about film

director:	Simon Mozgovyi
producer:	Alex Chepiga, Artem Koliubaiev, Taras Bosak
script:	Simon Mozgovyi
photography:	Denis Melnik
editing:	Mykola Bazarkin, Simon Mozgovyi
music:	Roman Grygoriv, Illia Razumeiko, Zhanna Marchinska, Stepan Bebykh, Roman Grygoriv
sound:	Natalia Avramenko, Andrii Nidzelskyi