Katya’s journey from a naive believer in love to a woman finding genuine connection with Tanya. Dau's Proposition:
The "action" occurs when Katya invites a strange man from the street into the apartment to have sex while Tanya sits in the kitchen. Later, in a fit of jealous rage over a phantom lover, Katya destroys the apartment’s interior, uproots a flowerpot, and smears the dirt on her face. The climax is not a scream but a whisper: Katya, exhausted and broken, crawls into Tanya’s narrow bed and asks Tanya to tell her a fairy tale. Tanya complies, stroking Katya’s hair. The fairy tale is about a little girl who was lost and never found.
refers to Kora (or Cora), Dau’s wife, though in certain translations and subtitles, or specifically regarding the film DAU. Katya Tanya , the focus shifts between the women. However, the primary "wife" figure in the DAU universe is Kora (played by Darya Ekamasova).
View of From Soviet Hairstyles to Contemporary Gender Politics DAU. Katya Tanya
DAU. Katya Tanya is a challenging, profound, and deeply intimate film that offers a unique, female-centric view into the synthetic world of the DAU project. It successfully navigates the complex interplay between constructed reality and raw human emotion, making it a crucial entry for understanding the broader, controversial goals of Ilya Khrzhanovskiy's cinematic experiment. Its focus on female subjectivity and queer intimacy within a totalitarian setting provides a compelling, if unsettling, look at the resilience of personal life under the shadow of the state.
At its core, DAU is a cinematic universe consisting of 14 feature films co-directed by Jekaterina Oertel alongside Khrzhanovskiy. The project is an attempt to create an authentic historical environment, with hundreds of carefully selected participants (both professional actors and non-professionals) living and working in period-appropriate costumes, using Soviet currency, and immersing themselves in the mindset of the era for over two years. The goal was to see what would happen when real people were placed in a closed, artificial but highly authentic system.
4.5/5 stars
: Chief of the General Department; involved in a controversial, intense scene with Katya. Watching and Availability Parents guide - DAU. Katya Tanya (2020) - IMDb
To understand DAU. Katya Tanya , one must understand the unprecedented scale of the overall DAU project. Filmed primarily between 2008 and 2011 in Kharkiv, Ukraine, DAU began as a traditional biopic of the Nobel Prize-winning Soviet physicist Lev Landau (played in the films by conductor Teodor Currentzis). However, it quickly morphed into a massive sociological experiment. Forms of Female Subjectivity in “DAU. Katya Tanya”
is a feature-length installment from Ilya Khrzhanovskiy and Jekaterina Oertel's monumental and highly controversial DAU cinematic universe. Unlike other chapters that lean heavily on political torture, hyper-masculine power dynamics, or scientific jargon, this specific film shifts its gaze toward intimate, isolated corners of human emotion. It centers on female subjectivity, romantic disillusionment, and the forbidden subversion of Soviet societal norms within the confines of a totalitarian apparatus. 🏛️ The Context of the DAU Simulation Katya’s journey from a naive believer in love
The plot centers on (played by Ekaterina Yuspina), a young librarian working within the secretive, top-secret Institute of Physics Problems. Forms of Female Subjectivity in “DAU. Katya Tanya”
Played by Kateryna Yuspina (a professional model making her acting debut) Tanya: Played by Tatyana Polozhiy Dau: Played by world-renowned conductor Teodor Currentzis Nora: Played by Radmila Shegoleva
