Waviness

Faith, apostasy and the fragility of reality in the first film by a contemporary artist. Russian premiere as part of the contemporary programme of the Festival of Singular Films.

2024, Elena Skripkina

Russia—France
53 minutes, French with Russian subtitles

documentary

What are the dreams of nuns of the Carmelite Order, known for its strict rules? “White sand, shallow water—and I realized...” Director Elena Skripkina cuts short the heroine’s confession that opens her first major film, so that for the next hour viewers can draw their own conclusions about the state of mind of a woman who has devoted herself to serving God, and not in her native Russia, but in France. Her faith will be shaken when she suddenly falls in love with a rock musician.

Shot from Waviness, 2024

The film was begun 12 years ago, so the material is stretched out over time. The topic itself is very specific—the religious anthropology of a woman who lived in a nunnery for 25 years, and suddenly decided to change her life drastically by marrying a rock musician.

—Elena Skripkina, film director

Elena Skripkina is not only an artist, who won an Innovation Award in 2017 and a GES-2 grant in 2023, but also a theologian. As the film follows the remarkable heroine and the forks in her path, Waviness avoids talking about the nature of faith, but manages to convey its essence through formal solutions alone: changing the film format from 16mm to digital and then to amateur video, paradoxical cuts, and abstract element that invade the prose of the documentary. The changeability of the image echoes the fragility of existence itself: a homecoming Carmelite nun in the Russian landscape and the unexpected twist in her fate are no more, but no less unreal than the contradictory existence of the other inhabitants of the same landscape.

The screening will begin with a brief speech by the curator in Russian. If you require interpretation into English, please request it at least three days in advance by emailing international@ges-2.org.

The screening will be followed by a discussion with the director Elena Skripkina.