Masha Chernaya • Director of The Shards
"I wanted this film to work on the level of general human emotions, without explaining facts"
by Ana Stanic
CANNES 2025: The director discusses her film, a fragmentary portrait of life in Moscow during the spring of 2022, winner of the Doc Alliance Award for Best Feature Film
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The Doc Alliance Award for Best Feature Film was presented at this year's Marché du Film to Masha Chernaya's The Shards [+see also:
trailer
interview: Masha Chernaya
film profile], a co-production between Georgia and Germany. Deeply intimate and politically resonant, the film offers a fragmentary portrait of life in Moscow during the spring of 2022 — seen through the director’s eyes as she navigates personal loss and a society in disintegration.
The jury — Fernando Ganzo (Cahiers du Cinéma), Caroline Kirberg (pong film) and Gerald Weber (sixpackfilm) — praised the film for its unique cinematic qualities, highlighting its "quiet resistance to classic narrative structures" and its "powerful fusion of personal and collective mourning". The Doc Alliance Award, endowed with €5,000, supports emerging talents in European documentary cinema.
