Real Cinema: Mila Teshaeva

Vitaly Mansky met in Riga with renowned European photographer and filmmaker Mila Teshaieva, who has lived in Germany for many years. In the first days of the full-scale war, while many people were leaving Ukraine, Mila headed there instead to make her first documentary film, “Shards of Light,” which was presented in the Artdocfest programme.

What can photography tell us about war — and where do the possibilities of photography end and the territory of cinema begin? Why is film essential when the aim is not simply to tell a story, but to raise questions and encourage the audience to keep thinking?

This is a conversation about “photo-cinema,” documentary observation, contradictions and human choices, about how people change under the pressure of circumstances and how the past relates to the future. Mila Teshaieva talks about her attitude towards the war, her work on the film, photography and Russian cinema about the war, as well as her physical aversion to contemporary Russia and the impossibility of working with something you do not love.