Writer-director Angelina Nikonova to team again with Twilight Portrait star and co-writer Olga Dykhovichnaya.

Twilight Portrait writer-director-producer Angelina Nikonova is changing course on her next project, which will be an English-language, New York-set comedy currently called Welcome Home about a group of immigrants who have become hostage to their life choices.

Nikonova is currently writing the script and will direct, with Twilight Portrait star and co-writer Olga Dykhovichnaya attached to play one of the story’s two leads.

“It’s about the absurdity of the choices we make sometimes. There is so much choice these days. Sometimes we become hostages to those choices. It’s hard to make the right one sometimes,” Nikonova told Screen.

Nikonova and Dykhovichnaya are also developing a Russian-Japanese story set in the early 20th century Japan, on which they are hoping to find Japanese co-producers.

Last night, Twilight Portrait picked up the White Elephant prize for Best Debut Feature at the Russian film critics and press awards.

The drama, about a female social worker who becomes involved with one of her abusers, has already played in Venice Days, Toronto, Thessaloniki, Reykjavik, Warsaw, Stockholm and London among other festivals and earlier this month picked up the top award at the Les Arcs European Film Festival, which came with a prize of €10,000 towards the post-production of Nikonova’s next film.

The film has scooped prizes at 11 festivals in total.

Nikonova graduated from the School of Visual Arts in New York, in 2001.