Inter's Documentary "Zony rosta" (The Growth Zones) Won on Mediamixx

The documentary "Zony Rosta" produced by "07 Production" studio has become best in the "Documentaries and Journalist Investigations" category on the biggest media festival in Eastern Europe - Mediamixx that was lead in Bulgaria starting from June 4 and up to June 8. The author and leader or this project is Illarion Pavlyuk, the director - Sofia Chemeris.

Mediamixx  is an event that has been lead in a Bulgarian city of Albena for 14 years by now. It is considered to be the most authoritative festival in Europe and the biggest media-festival in Eastern Europe. It includes all the types of mass-media - TV, radio, press, web resource, and starting from this year the mobile content as well. The participants come not only from Eastern Europe but also from Germany, Italy and other countries to take part in the festival.

This year "Inter" TV-channel has participated in the festival Mediamixx for the first time, and at once it has won in the category of documentaries and journalist investigations. According to Inna Petuhova, the organizer of the participation and specialist of the "Inter" TV-channel's program products, "Zona rosta" was a sensation: "The film differed so much from all the other participants that the opinion of the jury was unanimousl".

The film "Zony rosta" is devoted to little people whom we call dwarves or midgets. In our society they have a special, often a very unenviable role of toys and fools. A line of life stories of little people is unfolded in front of the viewers - plain and shocking, tragic and fortunate. But they are all united with one thing: each of them had to break through the life in defiance of his or her height. Someone has managed, someone has not...

We asked Illarion Pavlyuk to retell us how "Zona Rosta" was created.

- The subject of the film is very complicated and in definite terms tragic. How did you come to the decision to film it and what were the difficulties that you encountered while filming?

- This is the first documentary created by our studio and when we were choosing the subject for the debut film, we had not even imagined all its difficulty and the depth of the tragedy of the people whom the nature has cheated out of their rightful due with height. Because of the problems of psychological character it was a hard task to persuade them to take part in the filming. At the very beginning 11 people had agreed but in the last moment 9 of them refused to take part. One of the characters to whom we arrived to Crimea told us "I'm sorry, but it was such a bad weather yesterday... I changed my mind". And it was the same with the others.

- What is the tragedy of little people?

- Our motion picture is about how the society treats such people. It is somehow considered that little people have one way, and it leads to the circus. But in fact nothing prevents this people from being anything they want to be because for the majority of the professions physical strength doesn't play any role. For example, we met a girl that could not enter a specialized school for years - they said she looked like a five-year-old so she just couldn't work as a nurse.

Ivan Chopovski - an actor, one of the characters in "Zona rosta"

- Are there a lot among them of those who managed to realize themselves in other spheres except the circus?

- There are a lot of characters in our movies with different destinies most of which are really sad. But happy stories are not excluded. For example, filming the dwarves that work in the circus we met a girl that adores her job and feels herself quite happy.

- Was there a special technology of filming?

- The whole film is done the way that the camera is located on the line of our characters' eyes. So they look normal and the whole other world looks big and abnormal. Our cameramen were to work in two bended in two. The main idea of our film was to show that these people are the same as we are.

Watch the VIDEO version of the documentary "Zona rosta" on Podrobnosti.ua site

The author and leader of the project Illarion Pavlyuk
Directed by Chemeris Sofia
Montage - Sergey Shalygin
Cameraman German Fedorenko
Cameraman assistant Alexey Fraymovich
Sound producer Andrey Fyodorov
Producer Yegor Benkendorf

Produced by "07 Production" documentary studio, May, 2007