Experiencing Interruptions?

Reconnection

Sean Fletcher is a successful web designer, more capable with the Internet than his personal life. Unable to deal with his recent break up, Sean tries to run away from it all by taking a trip to the Himalayas but finds himself stuck on the way in a small Indian town. Things get complicated when he gets a work offer at home only to realize he can't make it back in time to take it. While Sean figures out his priorities between career and relationships, he finds that he is stuck in a very unusual place, which takes him on a heart changing journey.

  • Maksim Varfolomeev
    Director
    Self-realization TV series (2003), Glimpses of Vraja (2011), Yamuna: The Stolen River (2013), Never Stop Chanting (2014)
  • Olga Avramenko
    Writer
    Self-realization TV series (2003), Glimpses of Vraja (2011), Yamuna: The Stolen River (2013), Never Stop Chanting (2014)
  • Maksim Varfolomeev
    Writer
    Self-realization TV series (2003), Glimpses of Vraja (2011), Yamuna: The Stolen River (2013), Never Stop Chanting (2014)
  • Sean Hobgood
    Producer
    Glimpses of Vraja (2011), Never Stop Chanting (2014)
  • Armand Gachet
    Key Cast
  • Francoise Gachet
    Key Cast
  • Sean Hobgood
    Key Cast
    Never Stop Chanting (2014)
  • Project Type:
    Short
  • Runtime:
    40 minutes 58 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    April 15, 2015
  • Production Budget:
    88,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    Russian Federation
  • Country of Filming:
    India, Nepal, United Kingdom
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    XDCAM
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16x9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Indian Cine Film Festival 2015
    Mumbai, India
    September 19, 2015
    Special Mention - Jury
  • The Best Short Competition
    La Jolla, California, USA
    June 10, 2015
    Award of Excellence: Film Short
  • SaMO Indie Fest
    Santa Monica, California, USA
    October 2, 2015
    Honorable Mentions
  • Great Lakes International Film Festival
    Erie, Pennsylvania, USA
    October 12, 2015
    Best Religious/Spiritual
  • Indie Fest USA International Film Festival
    Garden Grove, California, USA
    October 16, 2015
Director Biography - Maksim Varfolomeev

Maksim Varfolomeev (1974, Omsk, Russia) has been working on TV as an editor since 1993. In 1998 he switched to commercials and worked in a boutique design studio.
After 6 years in advertisement in 2003 he shifted to Almaty, Kazakhstan, found a production company and directed and filmed a Self-realization (Samoosoznaniye) TV series for national Kazakhstan TV.
In 2005 he joined an international advocacy campaign for human rights in Kazakhstan as a director of communications and PR.
In 2009 he returned to filmmaking and shifted to India where he found Vrindavan Experience production company and a web community with the same name, filmed and produced Glimpses of Vraja (2011, Vrindavan, India), Never Stop Chanting (2014, Dubai) and Reconnection (2015, Vrindavan, India), while simultaneously studying Indian philosophy and culture.

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Director Statement

I'm from Siberia, Russia, a place where you get snow for six months of the year. Yet it's 110F (43°C) outside of my window. It's my 6th year in India and the only reason I am here is Reconnection.
My wife and I were being told stories about a place called Vrindavan, a place that has powerful, almost a mystical potency to it. It's a small, dusty Indian town that receives over five million visitors a year, a lot of them westerners. People go to Vrindavan and their lives change. Different people from various backgrounds, the same conclusion every time - their lives changing for the better. Something special was there for sure. We decided we want to make a film about it. We felt it was more about the experiences that you have whilst being in Vrindavan than the actual location and place. We decided that our film would be a story, a story based upon characters, feelings and real experiences rather than a matter-of-fact documentary.
Reconnection is a film about uncovering the masks. It's about two worlds. A world of living behind a polite smile, where glances briefly meet only to get back to phone screens and a phrase "what's up?" - this doesn't really need an answer. And then it's about another world that only lets you in if you get out of your bubble, out of your sterile and sanitized life to a reality and eventually to your true self.
We started filming it and soon realized that it was not going to be easy. It was like the place was not letting us in. We had to stay in Vrindavan, submerge and absorb ourselves into local life. It was the only way to make it happen.
Little did we know what it would be like to have a studio in a town where power outages happen every day. We experienced dust storms, open sewers, animals on streets, health issues and the list could go on! We had 3-4 minutes on set before the locals came to watch which made filming impossible. What to speak of a language barrier and a different, very different world that we got ourselves in.
People can change you, places can change you, some places you search out to find, others have a way of finding you.
The film is complete now and we have had our life changing experience too. This place is so far off from our reality yet it has the best way to connect us back to ourselves. Now we want to share it with others because Vrindavan has something that we all lack.