Memory (2025)

Vladlena Sandu was born in Crimea and sent to live with her grandparents in Grozny at the age of six – shortly before the First Chechen War broke out there. In MEMORY, Sandu approaches these childhood experiences in a fragmentary manner, bringing her memories to life through surrealist images shot on 16mm film. Visual tricks, action figures, dolls and miniature houses become landscapes of memory, with the director’s voice guiding the viewer through them as a voiceover. An intimate, experimental documentary that translates violent realities into a multi-layered visual language.