ZELIM'S CONFESSION

“Actually, I want to forget these things,” says Zelim at the start of the film. But then the young man begins to talk. For a Chechen refugee in Ingushetia, waiting at a bus-stop proved to be a bad idea: he was spotted by a passing police patrol. They hauled him in, recorded his details, let him go. Shortly afterwards his family’s apartment was stormed by special police, and Zelim was arrested. He endured several days of humiliation and torture while his interrogators tried to make him confess to crimes he’d never committed. Although Zelim feared for his life, he stood his ground and refused to sign a statement. Natalia Mikhaylova’s documentary shows Zelim in the safety of Oslo, recounting his ordeal with astonishing composure one minute, bristling with curiosity as he explores his new world the next. But he remains nervous, restive, still in the grip of his ordeal. It is a portrait of somebody who refused to break under unimaginable pressure, and also a damning indictment of the officially sanctioned arbitrariness and brutality that prevails in the North Caucasus.

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NATALIA MIKHAYLOVA
Born 1980 in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Studied literature at St. Petersburg State University from 1997 to 2001. Worked as an interpreter, photographer and editor for diverse film projects in St. Petersburg and Moscow. Moved to Berlin in 2006. She made ZELIM’S CONFESSION as her graduation film for Film and Television University "Konrad Wolf" (HFF), Potsdam-Babelsberg, in 2012.

FILMOGRAPHY (SELECTION)
2013 / ZELIM’S CONFESSION (doc)