I Won´t Come Back (2014)

Ilmar Raag - Directors note

It is a strange film in a positive way.  In the beginning, some people where asking, why our protagonist, Anya, is behaving so erratically.  When she’s hurt, she’s returning the pain to others. Even our lead actress, Polina, asked me often during the shooting – why she’s so cruel sometimes. But then, the answer came from the other of our lead actresses, from 12 years old Victoria.  Thanks to that small girl, I started to see this film for what it really is – a story of having somebody close to you. The orphanage in the beginning is a metaphor for loneliness and childhood without love. Later, although Anya may start successful career at university, even in her choice of an older lover, we can see inside her a broken child. Only the meeting with Kristina, the real small girl of 12, will help Anya to find her own interior freedom.  So, if in the beginning Anya egoistically only expects love from others, then in the end, she understood the lesson that love is real only if you ready to give something in return.  ??

For me, the film shooting was like rediscovering Russia. When I proposed the project to my Finnish director of photography, Tuomo Hutri, I said he should agree only if he would agree to depart for an adventure. As for myself, I haven’t visited Russia outside of big cities for about 20 years, but everything we saw, was extremely interesting.  Part of the journey was shot in Belorussia and then we laughing that this is the film where an Estonian director and Finnish director of photography were trying to create Russia in Belorussia.  I was so much afraid, that it wouldn’t be honest portrait of Russian reality. So I asked our Russian producers some money to do an extra trip on Russian roads and to add a documentary touch to that film. Today, I feel calm, because I have both the beauty and harshness of Russian autumn. We were honest to ourselves.

Every film is a road to discovery, but if I have to say something about this adventure in particular, then this film is like melody of emotions and ultimately poetical realism.  Or may-be I just fell in love with both of our actresses, Victoria and Polina. They are both talents to be discovered yet and I am proud that I am among the firsts who saw them.