"Ayka" at the 71st Cannes Film Festival

Co-financed by the Polish Film Institute, Ayka – the latest film by Sergei Dvortsevoy has been selected for the Main Competition of the prestigious Cannes festival!

Ayka

A young Kyrgyz girl – Ayka – lives and works illegally in Moscow. After giving birth to her son she leaves him in hospital. Some time later, however, her motherly yearning leads her to desperate attempts of finding the abandoned child. The director states: “It began with a dry statistic. In 2010, 248 babies were given up by Kyrgyz mothers in Moscow’s hospitals. What could be the reason behind Kyrgyz mothers voluntarily giving up their babies, abandoning them in a foreign country? What could be forcing them to commit such an act, unnatural for any woman? I realized I could not fail to make a film about this: a film about a Kyrgyz girl searching for the child she abandoned in a Moscow-based maternity ward. This film will be about all of us: about what happens when relations between people and their environment reach such an extreme that the individual begins to deteriorate morally, and life forces the individual to re-evaluate and to change, sometimes even against his or her will.”

Creators

Ayka is a co-production of five countries. The main producer is Russian Kinodvor. The Polish co-producer of the film, is Anna Wydra from Otter Films. On the German side the movie was co-produced by Pallas Film. On the Kazakh side the movie was co-produced by Eurasia Film Production. On the Chinese side, the movie was co-produced by JuBen Pictures.

The film was lensed by Jolanta Dylewska. Tomasz Matraszek was responsible for the make-up. The visual postproduction was made by Polish company Coloroffon Film. The sound postproduction on Polish side was made by Joanna Napieralska.

Film is co-financed by Polish Film Institute. It is worth mentioning that Ayka is the second movie supported by the PFI in this year’s Cannes Main Competition. Paweł Pawlikowski’s Zimna wojna (Cold War) will also compete for the Palme d’Or.

71. Cannes International Film festival will run from 8 to 19 May 2018.