After the German premiere of “Aquarela,” renowned Russian director IDFA. Watch an exclusive trailer below:
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The artist who emailed Kossakovsky is known as K49814 and, for years, has been collecting fish scales for an intricate creative work of preservation. The woman is center stage in the director’s sprawling, wordless documentary, which trails her pilgrimage to a Norwegian island to return thousands of scales to the ocean. But it is not she, exactly, who is the subject of the film. “Trillion” takes its name from a status that shocked the filmmaker and that he believes should shock all of those who watch his latest: every year, over a trillion fish are taken from the oceans for consumption.
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Speaking with Variety ahead of IDFA, Kossakovsky recalls first seeing the fish scales in person. “I opened the door to her apartment and, from the bottom to the ceiling, it was full of fish scales. She cleaned them in her bathroom, dried them by hand, and stored them in the living room. It was unbelievable. Nobody understood it.”
“I am privileged to know some great people, great writers and filmmakers. When I told them about my new film and what the artist was making, almost none of them understood her point of doing this,” he adds, saying the purity of K49814’s mission resulted in one of his best films yet. To Kossakovsky, only two of his other works have ever given him the sensation he “had something”: his first-ever feature, “The Belovs,” a portrait of a Russian farm family, and “Gunda,” looking at the life of the titular pig and its fellow farm companions.
“When I made ‘Gunda.’ I knew I had made something more important than myself,” he says. “Even more so this time. I think it’s my most important film because it is pure documentary. It’s simple. Every single take is one take; we just followed her.”
With his porcine tragedy and “Trillion,” the director has now completed two instalments of his “Empathy Trilogy.” The five years that stand between the two are not only because of the time it takes to secure funding for a project of this scope, but also because of the bureaucracy involved with returning the scales to their place of origin where it was questioned if. “It might damage the ocean,” says the director, “Which was interesting given those people did not consider damage to the oceans when a trillion fish are taken out of the water annually.”
But Kossakovsky has fervent supporters on his side as he completes his long-dreamed trilogy. One of them is actor Joaquin Phoenix, an executive producer on both “Gunda” and “Trillion.” Talking about how the two first came to work together, the director recalls receiving several texts after Phoenix’s passionate acceptance speech for his best actor Oscar for “Joker.”
“I think that we’ve become very disconnected from the natural world, and many of us are guilty of an egocentric worldview, the belief that we’re the center of the universe,” said the actor in his speech at the time. Recognizing their shared values, the director got in touch with the actor.
“I sent him [‘Gunda’] and he called me back immediately,” he recalls. “We immediately talked about things the same way. Then, unfortunately, COVID happened when we had so many ideas to share. When I started working on ‘Trillion,’ I sent him a rough cut, and he said he wanted to be a part of it and wanted to help and support it. He’s an open-hearted man. I love that he watched the film with his family, his mom, and his sisters. He’s a beautiful person, and it’s beautiful working together because he’s open to such strange projects.”
In a press statement, Phoenix said “Trillion” “brings us a much-needed and ultimately revealing new perspective on our relationship with the natural world, and how that relationship should and needs to change.” “Just as with his prior film, ‘Gunda,’ I immediately felt I had to support such a bold artistic and cinematic vision, as well as support a filmmaker for whom the value of empathy is the driving force and the defining focus.”
Asked about his search for and platforming of empathy, the Russian filmmaker says that, when travelling the world, he sees “a lot of good people.” “I can see there are more nice people than bad people. Yet, we kill by the millions. I know a lot of Russian people who are nice, and yet we are causing a catastrophe today in Ukraine. We are behaving as gangsters, as monsters. I ask myself: Why? I agree with Tolstoy, who said it doesn’t matter whether we kill a person or an animal; it’s the act of killing. We kill a billion pigs every year, 60 billion chickens, a trillion fish. It’s called humanism. Tolstoy was right. We have to stop killing.”
“Trillion” is produced by Anita Rehoff Larsen and Tone Grøttjord-Glenne for Sant & Usant, and Joslyn Barnes for Louverture Films. Phoenix, Susan Rockefeller, Frank Lehmann, Fridrik Mar and Kaja Bjelke executive produce. Anonymous Content handles North American sales.
