Antenna 2026: Vladlena Sandu speaks about Memory

Memory plays at Antenna Documentary Film Festival 2026 in Sydney. Addy Fong speaks to director Vladlena Sandu:

Memory is a very personal film that captures this childlike wonder despite its serious subject matter about children who have been through wars and dictatorships. You mention at the start, ‘this film serves as an act of acknowledging my past and attempt to comprehend the cycle of violence spanning generations.’ Let’s start by having a conversation about this significant topic which you’ve presented through the eyes of a child.

I tried to analyze my past and ask myself many questions about my trauma, how I felt and the damage in my mind. Working through my life, what I felt and that kind of behavior, what I was in my family, every time just, ‘No, you need to be silent, not talk and not to express what you feel.’ And that’s something I have in my life and it still continues. I observe what’s going on right now in this world, how we live and recognize a lot of weird facts during my life because the dictatorship killed the will and created this kind of bubble where everyone is silent and we do not ask enough questions about what’s going on. That kind of silence produces another circle of violence. The question is how it’s possible to organise a conversation about huge issues in this world. I think we still live like we’re in the middle age, it’s not something different right now. It’s the same what’s going on. A lot of young people and kids they’re still involved in the conflict and war zones. 

I think dictatorships want to use this kind of energy from the young generation, they want to reproduce aggressive behavior. We saw a lot of films about how dictators produce social machines for killing, but if we talk through this way, we are gonna say, oh they’re bad. Now we have a chance to try to analyze, not from the sides of good or bad, but try to analyze them, why they have this kind of behavior, how it works through the generation. We have a chance to organize the conversation and dialogue with humans who have this kind of trauma and they reproduce new trauma for the next generation.  

For me it could be possible to organize the conversation, not say, ‘oh, they’re just bad people.’ It doesn’t work. It’s really going for the next circle of violence. The film, Mr. Nobody Against Putin, it’s interesting and good. It represents the humans in this system, it represents the kids who grew up inside this regime. If we observe it, we understand they’re just not bad humans, they grew up inside and this machine wants to use them. If we try to imagine a future, unfortunately a lot of them could be involved in this conflict and that’s a problem. How we have a chance to understand how it works, to understand them and to observe them, they as well are victims. They’re not just humans who are gonna support the next circle of violence, the question is, why are they inside the circle of violence? How do we have a chance to organize a conversation with them?

I don’t know. When you speak about that, it makes me really sad because I think about how, as you said, there’s no good or evil, there’s no heroes or villains. We’re looking at the system, right? As in the culture, the system, what people have been exposed to growing up. I wanted to ask about your approach as a filmmaker because filmmaking explores a lot of questions that don’t have clear answers, ambiguity and uncertainty. I think film allows for creative expression and that is seen in Memory. You share in the film that as a child you were exposed to a lot of cinema, you watched a lot of movies, and that’s had an influence. Can you talk about that, this film, your love of cinema and if that’s a way that helps release those emotions?

I think film, for myself, is an act of art therapy. It’s an example of how art transforms the violence into peace. I wanted revenge when I was teenager, when I was young, I wanted to come back to the war. All my life I’ve had this question for myself. Sometimes I wanted to go to the warzone and do something. I asked myself why many times. The question for me, because I know how it works. The adrenaline there, it’s a drug. If you live in a war zone, long time, your level of adrenaline, it’s so high. It’s basic adrenaline going higher and higher. The PTSD when you start to live after that in the normal calm life you don’t know how you can live without this knowledge. You want to be somewhere where there is violence, very high, where you have a chance to feel those kinds of emotions. I don’t know, that’s a huge issue. 

If you remember the film, Apocalypse Now, at the beginning, the main character was in the hotel, he was drunk with women, and after knocking he opened the door and another war man said, ‘oh, we want to have you right now to go to Vietnam.’ He’s like, ‘oh, I waited so long.’ He really doesn’t know how to live a normal life. He just  wanted to go back to the war. This isn’t just for war men, it works for normal people like kids as well and that’s a problem. 

During my life I lived through it, with this kind of thinking, I really wanted to go to war and to do something, I don’t know. I asked myself, ‘why, why, why?’ If I was gonna be in a war zone, I’m really gonna feel that kind of adrenaline. To be honest it’s what I really want. I don’t know, to support people, to take care of something, but if I do something good there, but only what I want to have, to be honest, to feel this level of adrenaline, that’s a drug. 

It’s like a familiarity, even though you know it’s not safe. Rationally, you know it’s really stupid, but somehow…

Yeah, because it’s dangerous. You feel immediately that level of adrenaline. You can imagine the people who live there a few years if the kids grew up there. The question is, how do they have a chance to start living a normal life, not going for the next level of violence. Through this film, I tried to express that kind of memories, what really created this damage in my mind. At the end I said, ‘if they’re gonna kill my mom, I gotta find a box of grenades and I wanna kill everyone. That doesn’t matter for me’ That’s like a line from a speech where a naive little girl wants to play with balloons. She just doesn’t want to play with the balloons. 

In the end we observe like Frankenstein they are really ready to kill you. 

I tried to transform my violence inside through art to build this documentary, how it works and are we really important to create a conversation about that? If we’re gonna talk locally about the conflicts between Palestine and Israel or Russia and Ukraine, who is right, who is not right, yes it’s important but if conflict stopped right now it’s not mean that it stops now and that’s the problem. There are kids who want to do revenge, they are ready for that because they are full of traumas. How do we have a chance to care for them? How do we have a chance to transform this trauma and use tools like art?

I tried to build this piece to explain, yeah, it’s possible. Afterwards I felt good because we have a chance to talk, we have a chance to discuss because before it’s not possible to express how it was, how you can understand me, how I can understand myself as well. For me, that’s a form of practice and like art therapy for myself. 

You talk about art and art therapy, I’m just wondering, has talking about this film with others like we are doing right now, helped you process what you’ve gone through? I think the more you talk about something, the more a voice is amplified, the more strength art is given the more it helps release everything that’s in here (internal, personal) out to the world. 

Yes, it helped me because I started to talk about that. Before I was silent, during the production of the film as well, I started to talk about it because I worked with my team and we had a lot of fun, a lot of jokes. When I started to work with the script I did a lot of interviews with my colleague, she supported me for this script. Unfortunately, she’s not in the credits because she asked to take out her name, she still lives in Russia, it’s not safe. After that I started to explain how it was because every time I’m in silence with myself and that creates a lot of very weird situations. I don’t want to talk with people, I don’t want to be social, I want to escape from every discussion. During this process of the production, step by step I recognised, oh, it’s a process of healing, it really works. After that, I have a chance to have this conversation with you and smile. If I have a Q &A with people after the screenings it really works because we have a dialogue. Dialogue is important for everything because every member has a chance to explain something and people have a chance to talk about issues, about questions, at the end. I think that’s really great to acknowledge, to use art to try to break the circle of violence. If something is wrong, if something bad, maybe we have a chance to create something and talk about that.  

In my phone do you see this image? It’s from the Palace by Raphael, the Vatican, the Platonic Academy, that’s Plato and Aristotle. That’s like a form of dialogue because they have two different positions. Plato is talking about the main, the ideas, and Aristotle explains, no, I think the first is material. And that’s a big philosophical question: what’s the first material or idea? They have different positions but they could disagree about that. They talk about that, they discuss, it’s great, a philosophical way. They try to understand each other and I think that’s important. Imagine the kids or the people from Palestine and Israel, if they start to talk to each other. How the people right now from Ukraine and Russia, they start to talk about something. I think only that kind of possibility has the chance to transform violence into peace. 

Dialogue is the solution. You’re talking about philosophy, I thought about the chicken or the egg concept, what came first, very like…

Yes, they have a different kind of position but what’s the equal? They are humans. We are humans. If we recognise this basic idea, it means, okay, we’re humans, we’re different but we can find something between us, something interesting, the kind of ideas you have and what you think about. I think right now it could be very weird to think, oh, okay, how the people or the kids from Ukraine and Russia, can be close and talk, to try to play. Right now it’s a very dangerous question for both sides, but I think only that kind of question and that kind of situation have a chance to break this circle of violence. For me it was very important to have different kinds of people in the team, from Chechnya, from Russia, from different places. To do something together, to be humans together, to play, to organise art together. That’s interesting. 

That’s cool. It’s like filmmaking, it brings different perspectives and people together. 

Did you film Memory on film like 16mm film? The opening shot of the kid on the beach at the start has this film look. I don’t know.

Yeah, we did it with 16mm original Kodak film. I was open to questions about the documentary, the acting, is this fiction or not. In the opening, you observe that frame, there’s a girl on the beach. You see at the beginning, what we observe, she just exists on the beach, she’s acting, it’s impossible, she’s a little baby. I didn’t ask her to play this character. She is not yet speaking, she is just a little girl, we just give her a different kind of toy, she just exists. If she wants to run she runs that’s what we can use and DOP runs as well. It’s interesting, it’s a raw documentary at the beginning. I use this one because we do this shooting, before that we did it because we needed to synchronize sound, but I used it, we just shot the film, and she just exists on this beach. Just the idea about childhood memories, memories where you’re like a little baby without this knowledge about the world, you exist, you just play with balloons. I think kids really want to play with balloons on the beach and they don’t know what kind of toys we use. If we give kids toys like weapons, they’re going to play with weapons. If we give them balloons, they’re going to play with balloons. They just use what they have around them. The question is who gave it to him, these weapons? Who created these images? We have a chance to imagine they grow up to be adults, they do a lot of violence but the question is who gave it to them, those tools and weapons at the beginning. How they have a chance to understand themselves and to analyze that, I don’t know. If someone is like a killing machine, the question is why and when he found this tool to kill.

Dutch philosopher Huizinga’s book, Homo Ludens, is about conceptions, how we human society, we create games. Everything is part of a game, which kind of games we use, which kind of play we do, how we use the play during our life. He explained how violence and war is one form of the play. If we observe from this further perspective, that’s two different  frames at the beginning, the girls she played with balloons at the beach and the girls and boys they played with weapons. What did they want to do? They wanted to play the game.

The question is what they use for the play.  

Yeah, they just want to play but they don’t know what they’re playing with. Because people who know, they’re giving them the thing to play with, whether it be a balloon or a weapon and that’s really scary.

At the beginning of the film I feel, ‘oh, it’s beautiful. She just plays with balloons, they’re colorful, it’s pretty, naive, childish energy.’ I think we are like that, how we have a chance to keep it, to support kids who grew up in this dangerous situation and come to play with  dangerous toys to maybe transform and give other toys and to create another way of playing.  That’s the question I wanted to ask. I don’t have a real answer for everything. I just wanted to ask these questions and to talk to the audience about that. If I visited the toy shop and I observed weapons there I would feel scared. That’s the thing, I think it’s a crime that toy shop weapons exist, like colourful toy guns. Why are we not talking about that? It’s a crime. A toy shop like drugs for kids or something like that. It’s interesting to observe from that perspective. 

You prepared yourself for this interview, you watched the film, why do you think it’s interesting for you? Why did you like to talk about this film?

For me, it was interesting because when I saw your film it was a very unique approach to memories of war. Usually a documentary is an interview of somebody talking to camera and then B-roll. I liked your creative approach. Your film reminded me of arthouse European cinema, one film in particular being Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries with the character’s retrospective look on his past. I also thought of, maybe because you filmed on 16mm, Sergei Parajanov’s The Color of Pomegranates with the framing and use of colour. Those are both well known films celebrated in cinema, were those films an influence? What films influenced your visuals in Memory? 

Okay, so you like this artistic approach. It’s interesting to you to discover something this way. Thank you for your answer. For me, sometimes if we try to build a documentary, sometimes raw facts about something, we just absorb it, it’s sometimes very difficult to look at, very difficult to feel, because we sometimes want to escape reality. I wanted to be out of this knowledge of what the documentary is and how it should  be. I built this without knowledge of how it should be like a kid because if you’re like a kid you just play with different kinds of toys, use this and this together, mix them and play, and that gives another perspective. That’s how I tried to build this film out of knowledge of how it should be, which kind of style it needs to be, everything could be together like uh Beethoven and it’s my life. It becomes play, I don’t have rules on how it should look and be. That’s opened for me a lot of doors to be free, to decide this or this or this. I think maybe this created this level of naivety, a naive way about this reality. That’s what’s interesting for me. I think, what you mentioned about Ingmar Bergman, he’s used those kinds of elements, how he explained reality because my documentary Holy God, my graduation film in the University of Cinematography, I used that. 

You studied cinematography at university? 

Yeah, University of Cinematography in Russia. It is the same university as Tarkovsky-Perodzhanov. Eisenstein was a teacher there. It’s an old institution. I asked myself how I can do this graduation film, Holy God. I take a Bergman-like reference for myself. In his film, Hour of the Wolf, at the beginning Liv Ullmann, she just went and see through the camera and looked at the camera, started to talk with the camera to explain something. For me that’s very interesting. If I’m just gonna do a documentary and I just use a camera, it becomes a real person, but not only person, different kinds of people oh who gonna look at this and talk with me and to have this conversation, like dialogue with me because this film could exist after 100 years, 200 years or more. It’s interesting if I open myself up to talk with people, it’s possible to meet in my life, that gives me real inspiration. Bergman really gave me a few ideas on how it’s possible to use art during the process of the creation to be open to something new. I really liked the beginning of this film, Hour of the Wolf, when Liv Ullman, this fiction film, sits in front of the camera and starts to talk with the camera. 

Looking at the shots in Memory, there is a lot of symmetry. The character looks directly at the camera, breaking the fourth wall. I found that really cool because the documentary does this, it addresses the audience and confronts them as if a societal mirror. I’ll be honest, when you asked me a question before, I was surprised. Usually I’m asking questions but we’re having dialogue, having that conversation. I found that really cool.  

I am wondering about the origin of your film Memory. What is the thing that inspired you to begin creating? Like some people have a sound or like a soundtrack in their mind, some people have visuals, others write. You’re credited as having written, produced, and directed this but you said that you studied cinematography. What was your starting point in the making of this film?

When I studied cinematography, my first graduation film was Holy God, about how it was after the war and how we lived in silence with my grandma and we didn’t talk about anything. I visited archives in Moscow, one of the big archives, I found documentary photos from Chechnya during the war time. But in Russia, they still call this special military operation. There are real documents about this crime, and I take with my phone a lot of pictures from this archive and I start to think about that going through my memories and I understand now I really wanted to build a documentary about this historical event because I was a witness.

I really wanted to explain this historical moment through my perspective. That inspired me. I started to think about how I can build my memories about this event in my life, how I can  build this story without a lot of documents from my past. I don’t have access to them. I think, my story, my voice, it’s enough to be a document because I was there, I had my memory, it’s enough to be part of a documentary. I said okay, if I’m gonna be further from reality, because what is reality? This is only perception about reality, because we have different kinds of perception about what’s going on around us. If we are in the same moment together, you have your perception about reality, I have another one, it’s impossible to build a universal concept about reality. I just used my childhood memories to explain, to build the image because I don’t know what reality is. During this kind of idea, step by step, visual material is based on text, script was first, but text was inspired from these pictures from the archives, that’s how it was, the documentary picture in an archive. A few of them now exist in the memory, like when it was New Year, one man in the bed in the hospital and around him his family, they want to touch, but he’s almost about to…. dying, I use this picture from this archive and everything after that it’s like the meeting this and this

…. like you’re adding to the textures of your film.

 You mentioned, It’s My Life. It’s interesting because there is a song that plays at the start of your film. I’m reminded of the Bon Jovi song It’s My Life that goes [Note: Addy begins to sing really badly here, thank goodness for transcriptions], but it’s got a different vibe to it, maybe because it’s from another country? Or is this a different song altogether? Can you talk about that song and why you chose it?

That’s a song from my memory. I remember this song because it’s a real song back in Crimea, this summer camp where during this visit from Chechnya I saw my father  the last time and that was a very popular song at that time as well. I remember it was like a discotheque, they danced to this song from my memories. After that I realised it’s very interesting. I remembered this song for this part, but songs have two meanings, this film is about me and about my life. It was a real song. I think the music, what I use in Memory, that’s really from my memories about something.

Memory plays on Sun 8 Feb at 3:15pm at Dendy Newtown and on Sun 15 Feb 4:00pm at Ritz Cinemas.

For tickets and information, go here: https://antennafestival.org/films/memory/

Interview by Addy Fong.