When ten years ago the documentary series Poland-Russia: A New Look, featuring films by Polish and Russian authors, appeared in cinemas, one of the presented pictures was particularly memorable. Wojciech Kasperski’s The Seeds, a story about a family living somewhere in the Altai Mountains, about a dark secret and difficult human relations, haunted viewers for months. A decade later, I still remember remember that film – not its protagonists or individual scenes, but its atmosphere of mystery and the density of emotions which shrouded Kasperski’s documentary. As a director, he has a unique talent to unravel worlds that are at the same time strange and familiar.
In his latest documentary, Wojciech Kasperski returns to Russia. Icon is about a psychiatric hospital located somewhere in distant Siberia. And once again he shows that he is a master of laconic storytelling and that he is able to touch on the most intimate truths about people, and yet maintain a distance and not cross ethical boundaries. Icon, which was awarded at the 56th Kraków Film Festival, is an outstanding film, rooted in uncertainty and curiosity, posing questions, but not hinting at easy answers.
Preparations for this documentary took several years. Initially, Kasperski wanted to shoot a film about a physician working with terminally ill patients. Together with his crew, he travelled four thousand kilometres across Russia, documenting. He visited, among others, oncological hospitals and clinics dealing with the trauma of war.
In 2014, he talked to Katarzyna Skorupska from the Polish Filmmakers Association about searching for the right place:
Far away, we see a massive building at the end of a village. From afar, it looks like a school or a barracks. When we drive up closer, we realise that these are practically ruins. A collapsed roof, some windows are boarded up, others covered by grating. […] An exciting photo object, but that’s not it. When we get closer, we can see lights in windows and people outside. And then somebody says that this might be it. We walk to the nurses station where we are greeted by the head physician. He leads us to his room, which is in the intensive care unit.
Kasperski’s crew spent two months in the hospital. Dressed in protective coats, they spent time among the hospital patients, documenting their everyday rituals. The image surfacing from their observations is alarming. The hospital, which has five doctors for 1,500 patients, and so many patients that they collide with one another almost constantly, hosts people who have been marginalised by society. We come across people with serious mental problems, people with bipolar disorder, a serial killer, and many others who were sent to the institution only because nobody needs them.
It is a dumpster, where society discards those whom it doesn’t know what to do with.
– Kasperski says in the interview.
This is where problematic children are sent. This is where the paralysed go. When their families send them here, their problems disappear, and instead government pensions begin to come in. Those who come to the institution normally never leave its walls again. They spend several decades here, waiting for someone to take them to the normal world once again.
