“Until February 24, 2022, we were working in Russia primarily in theatre, with a particular focus on contemporary playwriting. After the outbreak of the war, we emigrated first to Finland and later to Germany. During our last days at home, we came up with the idea of collecting personal notes that could eventually form the basis of either a performance or a film.

From the very beginning, this chronicle was not intended to distinguish clearly between documentary records and deliberately staged material. The only requirement was that every trace – whether a sound recording, a photograph, a video fragment, a thought, or a line from a book – should retain the imprint of a lived day or event. Some of these materials were direct documents, such as photographs of our empty apartment taken shortly before our departure. Others were imagined in advance and staged later, for example on a ferry or on the banks of the Elbe in Dresden.

In the first years after leaving, and in many ways still today, our inner emotional state changed rapidly from day to day. Constant emotional swings made it impossible to formulate a clear and stable statement. The diary form offered a certain freedom: a diary does not require consistency, a fixed narrative, or a predetermined conclusion. It allows fragments, contradictions, and unfinished thoughts to coexist.

The project initially developed in two parallel directions – as a series of performances and as a film. The premiere of all four parts of the performance cycle Letters Home took place in Dresden in January 2025. These were intimate performances of approximately one hour each, reflecting on notions of home, language, creativity, and loved ones – subjects familiar to anyone who has been forced to leave their home during difficult times.

For each performance, we assembled our own evolving chronicle, which later became the foundation of the film. Some material from the performances was subsequently incorporated into the final edit. For example, the scenes showing a photograph emerging during development are actual footage from a live performance, recorded during the event itself and later re-filmed on motion picture film during the final stages of post-production, when we realized how essential these images were to the film. The archive sequence at the end of the film was created much later, during the final stage of production in 2025, while we were editing the film and working on the sound design during our residency at the Akademie Schloss Solitude.

In total the process of filming and collecting material lasted for three years. Any initial intention to construct a more or less coherent fictional narrative gradually dissolved in our own unstable emotional state and in the impossibility of expressing the chaos that was burning inside us all at once: the horror, anger, and shame caused by the ongoing war; the fear, disorientation, and paralysis brought about by an uncertain future; and at the same time the love, warmth, and generosity we received from the people around us.

Gradually, Dresden itself – with its complex history, its Baroque architecture standing alongside Soviet-era apartment blocks – became a place of consolation for us and, to some extent, helped extinguish that inner fire.”

Alena Starostina and Ivan Nikolaev