Private Project

Morning Afternoon Night

They say you can start over, but if the music in your head is different, and the smells aren’t the same...then what? Where is that start?

In a single day, Marta, a young Russian immigrant in Perth faces the end of her visa and the question of who she really is when home is nowhere to be found.

  • Dasha Melnik
    Director
    Basil vs Basil
  • Dasha Melnik
    Writer
  • Mark Zanosov
    Producer
    BLUNT
  • Dasha Melnik
    Producer
  • Anna Martianova
    Key Cast
    "Marta"
  • Mark Zanosov
    Key Cast
    "Mark"
  • Lilliana Benger
    Key Cast
    "Barista"
  • Liang Xu
    Director of Photography
  • Nicholas Gardiner
    Music By
  • Ethan Riches
    Production Desginer
  • Mark Zanosov
    Editor
  • Oscar Hannington
    Assistant Director
  • Luke Dewar
    Gaffer
  • Scott Montgomery
    Sound
  • Blade Schoen
    Sound
  • Banjo Stapledon
    Unit
  • Iain Appleyard
    Unit
  • Project Type:
    Short
  • Genres:
    Drama
  • Runtime:
    7 minutes 30 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    May 17, 2026
  • Country of Origin:
    Australia
  • Country of Filming:
    Australia
  • Language:
    English, Russian
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital, ARRI
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:10
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Dasha Melnik

Dasha Melnik is a Perth based filmmaker and visual storyteller whose work exists somewhere between fever dreams and reality. Originally from Saint Petersburg, her background in journalism continues to shape her cinematic language, one deeply focused on observation, emotional truth, and the quiet complexities of human nature.
Her directorial work includes the short documentary Basil VS Basil, featured in the “Homegrown Heroes” program at CinefestOZ, alongside a growing body of narrative and experimental projects developed in Perth’s independent film scene

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Director Statement

Morning Afternoon Night is about the quiet grief of immigration, not the dramatic kind, but the everyday feeling of losing one version of yourself while trying to build another in a place that doesn’t feel familiar yet.
It follows the emotional space between memory and survival, between the mother you left behind and the life you’re trying to build. It’s about how the past doesn’t stay in the past, it stays in your body, your habits, your language, your silence.
At its core, it’s a film about not fully belonging anywhere, and learning how to live with that. Not by fixing it, but by simply continuing, moment by moment, morning, afternoon, night.

I wanted to portray immigration not as a political experience, but as an emotional and psychological state, a slow detachment from everything that once felt familiar. The inability to fully belong anywhere.