From Splinters

The 2022 short film From Splinters tells a story about a subject who has experienced loss. She forever lost the Other, in whose eyes they wish to be reflected and recognize themself as in a mirror. But the Other died, the reflection is no more, and the subject tries to collect it from the splinters: the fragments of the dreams, memories, and reveries.
The film is about female subjectivity. The heroine is a woman in love, who is waiting for her man, preparing for a meeting that is not destined to take place. She desperately wants to find her reflection in her lover's eyes, but the only mirror that gives her a reflection is the water surface of the lake, the surface she breaks. But who is the main character? Is it her or is it the one she waits for, whose presence permeates every frame, even when a pair of waterfowl slide apart on the water?
The film is about the unconscious. It is symbolized by the water itself, under whose reflecting surface there is both the sweetness of a love encounter and the unfathomable depth of loss. The heroine glides on a reflective surface when she dreams in her sleep, but wakes up and is plunged into the horror of the Real, which is connected with the irreversible realization. The sounds of the air-raid alert are numbing: the war has begun, as it did eighty years ago. The dreams have not deceived her: she will not be able to find her home or meet her beloved.
From Splinters opens with a quote from Andrei Tarkovsky's movie Mirror. These lines are not only a tribute to the director, but also make a meaningful reference to his famous and most personal film from 1973, in which the author looks into his visions as if in a mirror, trying to find the answers to his disturbing questions about personal becoming. Immersing himself in memories of his childhood and home, he reflects on his relationships with his wife and his mother, who even stars in the film. This picture still gives rise to much discussion and interpretation. In 2013, I wrote a psychoanalytic essay The Reflection of the Father about this film, arguing that when Tarkovsky peers into his female characters, he is looking at the other side of the mirror, searching for the place of the symbolic Father—here, in an artistic sense, the author presents his film language. Tarkovsky speaks about the inner experiences of the main character while reflecting himself in the images of those close to him, but the author himself appears before us only at the end of the film, at the moment of his departure.
In that sense, From Splinters is an inverted movie: we see only one heroine, but she is portrayed in three different states as well as places and times, making the narrative timeless. This underscores the unified rhythm of the film: it is synchronized with the beat of the metronome and the clacking of the women's heels—which speaks of the single time of the subject's emotional experience that only the art of cinema can most accurately depict.
However, it is only at the end of the film, or even after viewing it, that the viewer understands what has happened. An integral canvas is formed from the scattered fragments, just as the heroine's three states merge into one in the final frames of the film. Then the heroine freezes and looks directly into the camera, appearing in a bright but blind spot. The presence of the Other dissolves and only the lens of the camera remains: an absent, indifferent, wordless Gaze peering into her like the reflective surface of a lake.
The film was shot before the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the editing was done during the war. At that time of filming, we had no idea that the war would soon cover the entire territory of Ukraine and that the terrible horrors of the war, which our people experienced eighty years ago, would come to life again.