Breakfast with Lionella
An interview with Sergey Borovkov, director of Lionella
How did you come up with this name? Do you know anyone called Lionella?
We found this name from the YouTube blog of a local Imam. He was telling a story about the muslim name ceremony tradition in which his friend has asked him to name his newborn granddaughter Lionella. This name, for the Islamic part of Russia is really unusual but as for other parts, it is absolutely ok. Actually, nowadays, there is a tendency to give rare, and sometimes funny names. And my director girl, who’s called Lionella, she’s very proud of it, to bear so rare a name.
Can you tell us a bit more about the place the film is set in?
Our friends invited us to Dagestan to help us refine the story that we were working on at the moment, so we got to travel across the country a lot. One day we drove through a small village up in the mountains which specializes in selling used fridges, and it was quite a surreal sight, so it caught our attention.
Why is Magomed selling fridges in what looks to be a very remote area?
Traditionally Dagestan villages and towns tend to specialize in some particular craft or occupation, like producing jewelry, or wine, or arms, so a village of second-hand domestic appliances is not unheard of. The area itself would not be considered very remote, there’s much traffic and public transportation.
Tell us a bit more about your work as a filmmaker.
Maxim Matunin and me have been writing and making films in our spare time for many years, most of them left unfinished. But our third attempt was accepted to an international film festival. All three are shorts and feature an old or aging main character feeling of impending doom, all three are rather slow paced and open-ended but still interesting to watch, so we hope.
Would you say that the short film format has given you any particular freedom?
In my opinion, the gap between short and feature film is as huge as the gap between short-stories and novel. Sometimes making a short is more complicated because you have to be very precise as you ‘re lacking time to create an atmosphere, pauses, etc. But surely shorts cost less money and the staff can be really reduced so it gives you some freedom.
