Conversation with Vladlena Sandu on Memory

Vladlena Sandu, Memory, 2025, film still.

Isa Jacobs (IJ): Memory was one of my favorite films this year, it felt very special. It is obviously a deeply personal work but also wonderfully experimental and multilayered—you combine found footage, family archives, documentary and staged scenes with actors. How did you come to make this film?

Vladlena Sandu (VS): The first intention came from writing. I started writing novels around 2006 about a very peculiar historical moment: the war in Chechnya. Before that, I had PTSD and I could not speak about what happened. In Russia, it was impossible to talk about this openly because the war in Chechnya is still officially described as a “special military operation” against terrorism. From my perspective, it was the first colonial war by post-Soviet Russia, fought against the Chechen people.

For many years, I remained silent because this topic was so difficult to discuss. People in Russia would say: “It was not a war. It was only terrorism, and we were fighting terrorists.” But I knew that this was not the reality. Eventually, I realized that I had witnessed a major historical moment and that I had to show my personal perspective on it.

I wrote about it and published my texts. I received very different reactions online. Some people discovered something they did not know, while others attacked me and said: “This is a lie.” I thought, if this creates such a strong reaction, then I should continue.

During my studies at the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography (VGIK), my graduation film was called Holy God (Svyatyi Bozhe, 2016). In that film, I first began speaking about my past through conversations with my grandmother. She died during the film; while making it I started asking her about what had happened. But every time I tried to talk about the war, she just wanted to escape the subject. She would say: “Why are we talking about this? Maybe we should talk about something good.”

We had never really spoken about these things. This silence is something I recognized in many people in Russia. People tried to escape from trauma, but trauma does not disappear. It stays inside you. You cannot sleep, you have nightmares, you become depressed, but you just don’t talk about it.

After the world premiere of Holy God at DOK Leipzig, during the Q&A a young German guy asked me: “Why did your parents decide to stay during the war?” At that moment, I did not know how to answer him. I had never asked myself that question in my life.

I began to think about it. I went to the photo archives in Russia (ITAR-TASS) and saw many documentary photographs from the war in Chechnya. Some of them ended up in Memory. I realized that although the authorities call it something else, there are many artifacts in the archives that document Russia’s war crimes. I wanted to build Memory from these materials and combine them with my own personal perspective.

Then I started working with producer Yanna Buryak. I contacted several producers, but the topic was taboo in Russia. Yanna was the only one who immediately responded: “I really like this idea. Let’s do it.” It took a long time to find funding and possibilities because it was such a difficult subject.

I wanted to build the film from my own perspective. The first layer was my diaries. The second layer came from sessions with a hypnotherapist. Through these sessions, I discovered many details from my childhood memories. For example, I remembered the moment when my grandfather involved me in killing coypus. I cried during the session, and all these recordings became part of the film. The third layer was conversations with my friend, who became a coauthor of the script. She asked me not to include her name because she still lives in Russia.

IJ: Can you say a little bit more about the shoot and the locations? Given the political situation and censorship in Russia, how was it possible to make the film there?

VS: It was extremely complicated. Russia created a system of censorship, especially after 2014. In order to shoot certain projects, you need special permission from the Ministry of Culture. We were shooting in the Chechen Republic and occupied Crimea. We spent one month in Crimea and several weeks in the Chechen Republic beforehand. We discussed how we could create an image of Memory and built a mood board together. We then started shooting in Crimea in 2021.

My previous short film, Holy God, which included my grandmother talking about the war and which included snippets from a speech by Putin, was called an “anti-Russian film” by the Russian Ministry of Culture. They refused to give me the document that allowed the film to be officially distributed in Russia.

I had to find a solution. I removed my own voice and Putin’s speech from the official version submitted to the authorities, and after that they gave me the certificate. But at Russian festivals, the film was shown in my original director’s version.

Because of this experience, I knew that filming Memory in the Chechen Republic would be very difficult. The Chechen Republic has an extremely controlled political environment. The regime that Putin created there through the Kadyrov family became, in many ways, a model for the kind of authoritarian control that later spread throughout Russia.

I created a special fake script for the Russian Ministry of Culture. In that version, the film was about my grandfather, who was a hero of the Second World War. He was presented as a great Russian patriot who built a house in Grozny, and the film was about preserving his legacy. They accepted this script and gave me permission to shoot.

Then I had to get another permission from the Chechen Ministry of Culture to cast local actresses. We applied, and I was invited to a private meeting with the minister of culture. He asked me many questions: Why did I want to make this film? Why was it important? I explained that I was proud of my grandfather, that the house where I grew up still existed in Grozny, and that I wanted to preserve those memories.

He said: “This is very beautiful. In the Chechen Republic, we respect our roots, our grandparents, our ancestors.” He told me that he wanted to help me and offered to provide three people who would accompany us throughout the shooting process and support us whenever we needed. At that moment, I understood that they wanted to control the production.

I remembered the scene from Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon, when the main character changes his position during a conversation. I realized that I had to change my strategy. I told him: “I really appreciate this opportunity. But I grew up there. This is my homeland. My friends still live there, my house is there. I graduated from VGIK, one of the best film schools in the world. My master is Alexei Uchitel. I have worked with Gazprom Media. I have a network. If you need help building culture in the Chechen Republic, you can ask me. I will do my best.” We looked at each other, and finally he said: “Okay, good.”

Of course, sometimes they came to check what we were doing. But we were shooting on 16 mm film, so it was not easy for them to immediately see what was happening. They asked us to show them the material, but I explained that we could not open the film because it had not been developed yet. This also protected us.

There were several difficult moments. Once, someone reported us to the police, and they came to check what we were doing. Another time, the entire team was removed from our hotel because the manager said he did not understand what we were doing there and did not want to take the risk. But we managed to finish the shoot.

IJ: The house we see in Memory—is that your real house?

VS: Yes, it is the house where I grew up. When I returned to the Chechen Republic in 2015, I saw the place again and realized that this house itself was a document, an artifact. I wanted to use it as a stage for Memory because it was a real place connected to my childhood.

Together with my coauthor, we tried to preserve the child’s perspective. I was first a child, then a teenager when these events happened, so we did not want to impose an adult judgment or simply say: “This is good, that is bad.” We wanted to simply observe how I experienced it.

We merged these three layers and created the script. The script was also the text that became my voice-over in the film. It was much longer originally—there were many additional stories, almost like separate short novels—but during shooting and editing I removed some of them. I wanted to make the story stronger and not overwhelm the viewer.

For example, one story was about my English teacher. She was killed in front of me when I was thirteen years old. I saw her body lying in a lake of blood and I remember looking at her and asking myself: “Why did she teach me English?” She lived close to my house and was a friend of my mother.

That story was in the script, but I removed it because I wanted to focus more on my family story, on this cycle of violence that passes through my family over generations. There were many stories that were important, but without them the film became stronger.

After finishing the script, I started working with my artistic team—cinematographer Liza Popova and production designer Daria Litvinova. I invited them into the process of creating the visual language of the film. I wanted to be open to their input and to discover something together.

IJ: About the cast, were they local children from the Chechen Republic? How did you find them, and how involved were they in the process?

VS: After my conversation with the minister of culture, we used their social media resources to organize an open casting in the Chechen Republic. During the casting process, I met around three hundred girls.

Usually, when you do a casting with children, you ask them ordinary questions: What do you like? What are your hobbies? What are your dreams? Most girls answer something like: “I like cartoons, television, dancing.” These are normal answers.

Then I met Amina. I asked her the same questions, and she looked at me and said: “I like boxing.” I was surprised. I asked: “Boxing?” She said yes. Her mother was standing behind her, wearing a hijab, and she said: “Yes, she is crazy about it. She watches all the matches on television. She knows all the boxers. She can talk about it for hours.”

I looked at Amina and asked: “Do you actually box?” She became shy and said: “I would like to, but I have to go to school.” Her mother then explained that in the Chechen Republic it was not really possible for girls to do boxing. The expectation is that girls should prepare themselves to become the perfect wife and follow traditional roles.

But her father disagreed. He supported her. At that moment, I realized something. Amina was still very young, but she already understood who she was and what she wanted. When I looked into her eyes, I remembered myself as a child. I loved drawing, but I was not allowed to use my left hand because there were so many rules in society at that time. I recognized that feeling in her. I called the producer and said: “I found her. She has to play this role.”

After that, I went to a sports shop and bought boxing equipment for her. I met with her parents and told them: “I really love your daughter. She is an amazing person. I want to give her the opportunity to act in this film, but I also want to ask you to give her the possibility to try what she wants.” They agreed. They found a female boxing trainer in the Chechen Republic, and I paid for her training because I wanted to give her the opportunity to discover this part of herself. Now she has won many competitions. She is very strong.

IJ: How do you feel that the meaning of the film has changed since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine? Do you feel that the film became a different film for audiences because it was released after the invasion? Do people often ask you about this?

VS: I first presented the film in Germany in 2017 at the goEast Festival. The idea existed before the full-scale war because I always felt it was important to speak about history from the perspective of witnesses, not from the perspective created by propaganda.

When the full-scale war began, I was arrested in the center of Moscow because I was protesting against the invasion. The police checked my documents and saw that I was born in Ukraine. Suddenly, I became a different person in their eyes. They started saying: “She is from Ukraine.” At that moment, I understood something about my own identity and about the way Russia sees people. I was born in Ukraine, I lived in Russia, and my perspective comes from my own experience of history. In March 2022, I fled Russia and started a new life in Amsterdam. I finished the film there.

At the beginning of the full-scale war, I was devastated. I stopped believing in the project. I thought, maybe this film does not need to exist anymore. It was a very difficult period. I was deeply depressed and completely lost. But with the support of my friends, I returned to editing Memory. Through the editing process, I realized that the film was not only about one particular war. It was about something larger: the cycle of violence, and how trauma passes from one generation to another.

The central question of the film became: What are we doing as human beings? Why do we continue to reproduce violence? At the beginning of the film, we see a young girl on the beach. She wants to play with balloons. She represents childhood, imagination, and possibility.

But at the end, we see documentary images of children from different wars. At first, they appear as victims—children who have lost their arms and legs. Then we see children with weapons, children who are being prepared to kill. For me, the question is: Why do we do this? Why do we transform children into instruments of violence? Why do we create child soldiers and continue these cycles?

I think we first have to be honest with ourselves and ask these questions. According to United Nations statistics, hundreds of millions of children around the world currently live in war zones. How can we take care of them? How can we help them transform their trauma?

I believe art can help transform trauma. It can create dialogue. Through this film, I can speak with people around the world, with people who come from very different places and have different experiences. Dialogue is a bridge between different positions.

For me, dialogue is one of the foundations of peace. When dialogue stops, conflict begins. When dialogue remains possible, peace remains possible. I want to invite people into this dialogue, even when it is difficult.

For example, organizing dialogue between children who have grown up under Russian propaganda and children who have experienced the war directly is extremely difficult. In Russia today, millions of children are involved in organizations that teach them military and patriotic ideas. They are told they must defend their homeland against enemies.

At the same time, many Ukrainian children have lost their parents, their homes, and their childhoods. Many have grown up with anger and a desire for revenge.

The same is true in other conflicts around the world. Children on all sides inherit trauma. We need to find ways to speak with them and prevent the next generation from continuing the same cycle.

IJ: Do you see Memory also as a dialogue with the past? Perhaps even a conversation with your grandfather? There is a very touching moment when you show his missing fingers and then his voice enters the film. We suddenly hear him humming. There is a moment of tenderness and reconciliation there.

VS: Yes. This actually goes back to the question asked by the young man: Why did your family decide to stay during the war? While researching and creating the film, I tried to find the answer. I went back to my grandfather’s history.

When he told me his story, showed me the photograph that appears in the film, and showed me the piece of his past that I still have with me in Amsterdam, I began to understand him differently. I stopped hating him. I realized that he was a human being who was trying to survive.

When I looked back at his life, I saw that his father had been killed in front of him when he was a child. Afterwards, he escaped from the Siberian labor camps by train to St. Petersburg. When he arrived, he said he had lost his documents and that he was from Belarus. He changed his name and received new documents because otherwise he could have been considered the son of an “enemy of the state.”

Later, when he was eighteen, he was sent to fight in the war. He fought for the same homeland that had killed his father. After being wounded, he studied Marxism-Leninism and built a life within that system.

When the Soviet Union collapsed and the war came to the Chechen Republic, I think he lost his belief that survival was possible. When he said, “No, we are going to die here. We are not leaving,” it was because he had lost hope. I realized that this was another example of the cycle of violence. Violence had destroyed something inside him. Understanding this changed my relationship with him.

IJ: You begin the film’s credits with references to Tarkovsky, Parajanov, and Pasolini. Can you speak more about the visual influences that shaped the film? I’m especially thinking of the tableaux-like images you create?

VS: Tarkovsky, for me personally, is the person who inspired me to believe that I could become a director. I first saw Andrei Rublev in 2006, about five years before I began studying directing.

There is one story in the film that has always stayed with me. At the beginning, we see a medieval village totally destroyed. Everyone has been killed, the village is burning, and only a young boy remains alive. Three men arrive looking for someone who knows how to create a bell. The boy tells them that he knows the secret because his father was a bell-maker.

But he is only a child. His father is dead. He does not actually know the secret. The men take him, and we follow his journey as he grows older and tries to create the bell. In the final scene, the bell is lifted and produces its first sound. The boy looks at it and says: “I didn’t know the secret.”

This episode gave me the strength to believe that even if I do not know the secret of filmmaking, I can find my own way. I can believe in myself. That is why Tarkovsky is so important for me.

His film Mirror was also crucial because it is a film about memory, about himself, about his mother. The protagonist is deeply connected to the director’s own life. This idea of transforming personal memory into cinema was very important for me. But I did not want to copy Tarkovsky. I think copying another artist is one of the worst things you can do. I wanted to find my own perspective and my own language.

Parajanov inspired me because he was able to create an extraordinary world with very limited resources. He used simple materials and transformed them into something unique. This idea was very important for me: Even without money or large possibilities, you can create your own world. You can use balloons, your house, plastic—anything. It is not about resources; it is about imagination.

Pasolini was important because of his relationship with Renaissance art. I love Renaissance painting, and for me Pasolini is someone who brought this visual tradition into twentieth-century cinema. His compositions often resemble frescoes, with a very strong sense of space and symbolism. Everything is flat, almost like icons. It was Pasolini who really brought the spirit of the early Renaissance to life again; his films remind me of Fra Angelico’s frescoes.

I also think about the Renaissance artists themselves. During the Renaissance, the major question was: If everything had already been done in ancient Greece, how could artists create something new? Leonardo and Michelangelo answered: We are not inferior to the past. We can learn from it, but we can also create something new. This idea is pivotal. I can use references, but I have to discover my own way.

For me, these three artists—Tarkovsky, Parajanov, and Pasolini—were not only great filmmakers. They were also people who fought with their work. They addressed social questions of historical consciousness and repression but also human freedom.

Parajanov was imprisoned because he was gay. Pasolini was killed because of his strong political position. Tarkovsky left Russia because he could not work freely under the Soviet regime. His film Andrei Rublev was kept from audiences for years because it was considered dangerous. They all showed me that I have to be honest with myself and believe in my ideas, even when those ideas are difficult. Even when I am making a film about the Chechen Republic, a subject that is impossible to discuss openly in Russia.

IJ: Can you say a little more about the process of creating the film’s visual language? The structure of the film does not follow a linear chronology; instead, different threads of memory unravel, moving deeper and deeper into the past. When you were editing, how did you bring all those different layers together?

VS: First we created a mood board together. As I already mentioned, I am a great admirer of Renaissance painting, especially Fra Angelico, and we also discussed Pasolini because of the way he transformed Renaissance visual ideas through cinema.

But at the same time, we wanted to remain open. The film is told from a child’s perspective. When you are a child, the world is not divided into strict categories. Everything can exist together.

That is why in the film you can hear Mozart, Beethoven, Dr. Alban, Enigma, and Bob Dylan. A child can connect all these things. Childhood gives you a certain freedom and openness. You observe the world in a different way, sometimes with humor and imagination. We wanted to preserve this feeling.

At first, I wanted the ending to show only portraits of children on a bus. But then I realized that if I ended there, children would become only victims. My intention was not only to show suffering, but to speak about how trauma continues and transforms itself over multiple generations. I realized this was not only about the Chechen Republic, Crimea, or Ukraine. It is something that has happened throughout human history.

When you work on a film, people often say: When you begin shooting, you have to kill your script. Then, when you start editing, you have to kill the idea of what you thought you had filmed. You have to be open to discovering something else. I tried to remain open, and through this process the film found its final form.

IJ: What are you working on now? Do you have any new project you would like to share with me?

VS: Yes, I am developing several projects. One of them is a hybrid documentary film called Transposition. I started shooting it in 2022, in Amsterdam, when I began my new life there after leaving Russia. I arrived with only a suitcase full of photographs from my family archive.

I was very lost at that time. TransArtists, an organization which supports artists in exile, helped me. They provided different places where I could stay because for one year I was living in Europe without legal status.

Through TransArtists, I became an artist-in-residence at De Toneelmakerij, a theater for children and young people in Amsterdam, where I stayed for two months. The theater is located in a historic seventeenth-century building. Inside the building there is a courtyard, and in the courtyard there is a sandbox. I started playing in the sandbox and recording these moments. I began observing the children who played there.

The place itself has a long and complex history. It was originally a Catholic orphanage and later became a psychiatric institution. Today, it is home to a children’s theater and kindergarten. This layering of different histories within the same space became important to the film.

The film is about my immigration experience. I exist in this courtyard in Amsterdam, watching the children and playing with them, but I am also playing with myself—with my own childhood. I move through several centuries of history: my personal history, the history of the Netherlands, and the history of Europe.

The film is inspired by the Dutch philosopher Johan Huizinga’s book Homo Ludens. Through his ideas, I try to understand how human beings have created different games throughout history. We create games, we build societies, we build wars, we destroy things, and we create new systems.

I realized that the sandbox is actually a first political space. Children are already negotiating power, rules, cooperation, and conflict there. Through this space, I ask: How can we discover something new? How can we stop repeating only the patterns inherited from history? How can we build something more peaceful? That is one of the projects I am working on now.

Another project is about sex trafficking. After the war in Chechnya, when I was sixteen years old, I escaped with PTSD. My mother had died on the street because of alcoholism, and I became involved in sex trafficking. A criminal group sold me to Moscow. I want to make a musical film about this experience. It is called Rainbow Cinema.

The main character has a memory of encountering King Kong in a movie theater called Rainbow. In the end, she escapes from sex trafficking because she discovers cinema and realizes that she wants to create films.

IJ: Thank you so much for your energy and time, Vladlena. And for creating this wonderful film.

VS: Thank you for your questions and for your interest in the film. It means a lot to me because I really want to share this film with people, to speak about it, and to create this dialogue. Thank you for your energy and for being ready to continue this conversation. I really appreciate it.

This interview took place in July at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival 2026.