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Dilemma

The corpse of a young woman is transferred to the morgue of forensic doctor Pavel Borisovich who is asked to perform a dubious autopsy. During the procedure he finds a USB stick in the victim's belly.

  • Dora Martynyuk
    Director
  • Dora Martynyuk
    Writer
  • Dora Martynyuk
    Producer
  • Sergey Solovyev
    Director of Photography
  • Dora Martynyuk
    Editor
  • Alexey Pochepko
    Key Cast
    "Pavel Borisovich"
  • Ion Danalaki
    Key Cast
    "Student Sokolov"
  • Polina Chebotkevich
    Key Cast
    "Alina Molchanova"
  • Project Title (Original Language):
    Дилемма
  • Project Type:
    Short
  • Genres:
    Drama, Thriller, Criminal
  • Runtime:
    17 minutes 23 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    September 1, 2021
  • Production Budget:
    8,730 GBP
  • Country of Origin:
    Russian Federation
  • Country of Filming:
    Russian Federation
  • Language:
    Russian
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    Yes - Regent's University London
Director Biography - Dora Martynyuk

I was born in Vladivostok, a city in the East part of Russia. At the age of 14 I went to study in England, because I wanted to express myself through film like my mother and my grandfather.

'Dilemma' is my first short film and my first try on festivals.

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Director Statement

Making a film during COVID 19 was hard. I had to come back to Russia and none of my professors or classmates could physically help me during production, so I had to find a whole new film crew. I started talking to people I knew, asking them to introduce me to someone, who knew someone who knew a DoP or a gaffer.

As I slowly started finding people I had to put myself together and deliver the best pitch for my film, because I knew I couldn't afford to pay people as much as they deserve, so I was selling them the idea, hoping they would like to participate.

Luckily I found enthusiastic people, who liked my script so much they agreed to help me bring it to life.

We had 4 really long shooting days in early may May. I divided the storyboard into even chunks, keeping in mind one of the actors could only attend 2/4 days and the make-up artist could only come for one day, so I put all of the autopsy shots in the first day.

It was stressful, as we were behind the schedule on the first day and I had to quickly find another special make-up artist to arrive on set in the morning and make the actress ready for playing a corpse cut open!

There were a lot of panic moments, which I don't want to go into (even though one morning the administrator of the location called me to inform we are no longer welcome on their territory for some reason, I called his boss and sorted this out peacefully) because it was all worth it! Even when I went to my hair salon a week after and my hairstylist told me I have a lot of grey hairs...Still worth it!

Then it was a whole other story with editing and Premiere crashing occasionally giving me even more grey hairs, but after all it was an amazing experience and I really felt like I am capable of bringing my ideas to life, finding people, inspiring them and managing the whole crazy film-making process. We even had the time to film bloopers with neon lighting and a smoke machine!

In other words, I loved the experience of being a film director and I like the way my first short film turned out. I hope people will like it too.