25/10/2010

Vodka Factory by Jerzey Sladkowski was awarded the € 10,000 Golden Dove Award at the International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film - DOK Leipzig which closed yesterday.

Vodka Factory [trailer] is produced by Antonio Russo Merenda (Hysteria Film AB) in co-production with ARTE G.E.I.E., SVT Documentary and TVP 1, with the support of Swedish Film Institute and Polish Film Institute, in collaboration with YLE Co-Productions.

The film focuses on Tatiana and her daughter Valentina who live in the boring, provincial town of Zhigulyovsk 1000 kilometres south-east of Moscow. Valentina, 22, works in a vodka factory, while Tatiana, 50, is a bus conductor. Valentina, whose dream is to be a TV star in Moscow, has to overcome her own limitations as well as the irony and malice of her comrades at the vodka factory.

Jerzy Sladkowski co-works with TV stations in Scandinavia, and from 1993 with ZDF and ARTE. He received numerous awards including IDA Award for Swedish Tango and Prix Arte for the Best European Documentary for Vendetta.