Give a Way (Maria Melenevskaya) Russia |

Give a Way
Maria Melenevskaya
Russia. 2024. 22 min

An intelligent woman, a seller in a second-hand bookstore, unconflicted and comfortable. It seems that she has long forgotten about herself and will endlessly tolerate, forgive and adjust. On a narrow road, her car can not separate with the car of a man who never backs up. What will she do? Will she give way or will she finally assert her rights?

MARIA MELENEVSKAYA

I was born in 1982. I graduated from the Lomonosov Moscow State University, Faculty of Philology. In 2006 I started working on television. Worked as an editor, producer, finally began to write scripts herself. In 2018, the series “Ordinary Woman” (directed by Boris Khlebnikov), which I co-wrote, took several major awards in Russia, as well as the prize for Best Actress at the SeriesMania festival (France). I am currently writing scripts and working as a creative producer in Moscow.

DIRECTOR´S NOTE

The plot was born from real life – the narrow courtyard of my house often becomes a battlefield for the owners of cars that can not give way to each other. In this situation there is a conflict, there is humor and there is an opportunity to show the change of characters. Why do people create images and masks for themselves and behave according to these images? What is real inner freedom? And why is it that to lose sometimes is to win something more than you hoped for? To win a freedom that is desperately lacking right now. It takes courage… or a nervous breakdown, which is essentially what my heroine had. But don’t think that this is solely a feminist story about an empowering of a woman. The antagonist is just as changing as the heroine. These people begin the long road to finding their true selves. I like the fact that in an entertaining way, with humor, you can talk about serious things.