Victor Kossakovsky, the Berlin and Barcelona-based director of Trillion, premiering at the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) this week, says he will not allow the feature documentary to be sold to streaming platforms or broadcasters as he wants it to be seen on the big screen only.
Trillion, handled for North American sales by Anonymous Content, is the second part of the director’s so-called “empathy trilogy,” following on from 2020’s Gunda, about the intimate life of a pig. The film is again shot in black and white. It has very few cuts, no narration and no storyline as such.
The documentary follows a solitary woman walking barefoot across craggy rocks, emptying tiny shard-like objects into the sea. It was filmed in Norway with the support of the Norwegian Film Institute. It is produced by Anita Rehoff Larsen and Tone Grøttjord-Glenne at Sant & Usant, alongside Joslyn Barnes of US outfit, Louverture Films.
The Russian-born director, who left Russia in 2008, believes this is his greatest film and deserves to be seen in the format in which the filmmakers intended.
“We made this effort to make this unique shooting and unique sound just to be sure it will be on the big screen,” he says.
He is calling for documentaries to be treated as a cinematic art, “not journalism, not small screen. Documentary as a form of art will exist only when we respect image, not story.”
Asked if he would be ready for the film to be licensed to broadcasters and platforms, he again emphasised: “No, I will fight for the big screen.”
The director declines to identify the Hamburg-based woman who first suggested the idea of the film to him and who features as the barefoot woman on the rocks. Her face is never shown directly. She has been in Amsterdam for screenings but has been attending incognito.
The film is yet to appoint a European sales agent. Kossakovsky fan Joaquin Phoenix recently threw the power of his name behind it, joining as executive producer, as he did on Gunda.
Family film
Kossakovsky says his next film, A Christmas Tale, is being filmed now in Italy’s Dolomites mountains.
“It will be a film for families,” he says of the film being produced by Rome-based Be Water, which also backed his 2024 feature doc Architecton, with backing from RAI Cinema.
The film is about a tiny ‘boisticle’ insect that has been destroying millions of Christmas trees in Northern Italy. Italy’s fir population (used in the wood for many musical instruments) has faced devastation from this tiny bug.
“In this part of Italy, for hundreds of years, they have made a monoculture of just firs. All cellos and pianos come from there.”
After fierce storms seven years ago, many of the fir trees were blown down. “When they are falling, for these little creatures, it’s like paradise. Bosticles multiply themselves by billions and they ate all the trees which have fallen and then start to kill the others too,” the director explains.
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