Photographers

The story takes place in Odessa in August 1991, against of background of the attempted communist coup that spelled the and of the Soviet Union. TV broadcast of a Communist coup press-conference in Moscow, interlaced with the “Swan lake” ballet. The rumours, helicopters, and occasional police patrols circle the coastal city. But the characters of the film seem to pay no attention to the events, preoccupied with their individual pursuits.

Three photographers – two local and one celebrated American – are moving through the city and its surrounding. Their paths never cross, yet in a course of a single day, each of them at the one point or another plays part in the misfortunes of the young woman Lera.

In the course of the day Lera, an English translator, suffers successive losses: her apartment, her job, her personal and social status, her relationships with her mother and her lover. On the road leading to Odessa she encounters a group of Americans, traveling in Ukraine with a famous landscape photographer. Lera’s fate seems to be taking a new turn when a stranger from the group proposes her marriage.

The script is structured as four parts, each following one lead character and ending in a photograph.