Sorceress (2017)

Naama Kates's directorial debut, Sorceress, a modern film noir, explores the glorious, delirious, and infinite powers of a world that's always present, whether we realize it or not. Set against the backdrop amid the drone of everyday life in wintry Russia, the film opens as Nina, a 20-something American ex-pat returns to Eastern Europe after the tragic death of her mother. Her chance meeting with a beautiful, confident and mysterious artist, Katya, turns her life upside down, for the better, but leaves her questioning her identity, her sanity, and her own truth. Nina fears she is destined to follow her mother's descent into madness, before ever discovering the secrets of 16th-century alchemist, Giordano Bruno. The history, the memories, the stars, the cosmos: they all come to bear upon her, threatening to undo her very identity, at once a liberation and a horror. "Sorceress plays in this space between the human and the inhuman, between past and present, between the drab and the ecstatic. It's never just one or the other. Perhaps Nina is insane. Or she really is frolicking with the stars. What difference does it make?" - Daniel Coffeen, author, Reading the Way of Things Filmed on location in Finland at Haihatus, an artist fellowship and residency program. Financed by the Finlandia Fund, 2016.