A very special In Conversation with Writer/Director Alena Lodkina.

Dr Justin Harvey from the UTS FASS Media Arts Production team catches up with MAP alum Alena to talk about her career trajectory; from leaving UTS to screening her second feature film Petrol at New Directors/New Films in New York last month.

Come along for the life and career advice and see a collection of rare clips from her body of work including Petrol and her first feature Strange Colours, which premiered in Venice in 2017.

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Petrol (2022)

In the mesmeric follow-up to her debut, Strange Colours, Russian-born, Melbourne-raised filmmaker Alena Lodkina casts an enigmatic spell of a movie centered around a film student named Eva (Nathalie Morris) and her fragmenting interior world. While working on a deeply personal school project connected to her Russian heritage, Eva meets the mercurial Mia (Hannah Lynch), a performance artist who runs hot and cold, and with whom she develops a close bond bordering on obsession. As Eva is drawn into Mia’s orbit, she comes increasingly to question her sense of reality, while at the same time making decisions about her own romantic, creative, and professional lives. Alternately whimsical and unsettling, Petrol is an entirely original vision, a film of moods as fluctuating as the weather, and a magical coming-of-age story that is also perhaps the tale of a haunting.

Official Selection— New Directors/New Films, Locarno, MIFF

“Calm precision and clear intentions reverberate with mysteries; simple but jolting special effects convey the ambient hauntings of the physical world”— The New Yorker

“Alternately whimsical and unsettling, Petrol is an entirely original vision, a film of moods as fluctuating as the weather, and a magical coming-of-age story that is also perhaps the tale of a haunting”— New Directors/New Films

"Lodkina’s penchant for upending narrative conventions and gleeful indulgence in all manner of the fantastique makes for a uniquely invigorating experience." In Review

TRAILER

Catch Petrol at Golden Age Cinema & Bar Fri 12 May, Sat 13 May, Wed 24 May, Mon 29 May.