Levin Peter

Laika, a stray dog, was the first living being to be sent into space and thus to a certain death. A legend says that she returned to Earth as a ghost and still roams the streets of Moscow alongside her free-drifting descendants. While shooting this film, the directors little by little realised that they knew the street dogs only as part of our human world; they have never looked at humans as a part of the dogs’ world.

A pack of strays – seven dogs and one woman live in the shadows of Moscow. Hidden from the totalitarian authorities, two species share their existence on the verge of disappearance. They are straying in constant restlessness through a savage landscape where the city is cracking. Shot from the animal’s point of view, patterns of mutual dependence and taming begin to blur.

«The earth has a memory», it is once said in this film. It embraces the dead, and with them their memories. Digging for these memories can reveal another life. Not as a document, but as fertile ground for feelings and thoughts. Director Levin Peter spends a lot of time in intense conversations with his grandfather who used to be stationed in the Ukraine as a soldier of the Wehrmacht. Levin travels there, looking to trace and excavate what he has heard. What he has heard are the kind of tales that can haunt you in old age.

A Belarusian model dreaming of a career in China finds herself drawn to a mysterious loner who works the night shift at a morgue. Their encounter unsettles her sense of body, beauty, and mortality. The fragile love story of two outsiders who turn each other’s worlds upside down and discover that they are not alone.

An evening in a bar. A tangle of voices. Fragments of dialogue. The voices melt into sounds and reality becomes elusive, only to cohere again a moment later.

What happens to the feelings of two people when they are poured into the official form of a marriage? Love can suffocate under the pressure of this contract or blossom into an unexpected, deep bond when confronted with eternity. Why do two people promise each other? Levin Peter and Elsa Kremser, not only two filmmakers but also a young couple, search for answers to these questions. Driven by a very personal story, the film interweaves very different couples and concepts of marriage.