Father. Mother. Me.

Vater. Mutter. Ich.

Father. Mother. Me.

Nadja Bobyleva

DE
2017
Documentary
74’
Focus

Born in Moscow, director Nadja Bobyleva moved as a nine-year-old to Cologne with her mother. Now thirty, the only things she knows about her father is that he works in a circus in Ukraine. Her mother had always ensured that she never met him. So after decades of doubts, Bobyleva embarks on the journey to finally track her father down and thus fill this blank in her life. The film constitutes the search by a stranger who has never experienced the security of having an identity formed by having a home and a family. A week-long train journey takes her from Cologne via St Petersburg to Moscow, Rostov and, finally, to Ukraine and Kharkov, in the hope of finding her roots and the long-yearned-for old, and also new, home. Will she meet her father? What if he doesn’t want to meet her, or refuses to accept her as his daughter? Is he even still alive? Bobyleva takes just one companion on her journey into the unknown: the camera.

Film series Hope & Fear

Director / Cinematography

Nadja Bobyleva

Script

Gesa Jäger, Nadja Bobyleva

Editing

Gesa Jäger

Music

Anton Berman

Production / Contact

Monokel, Roman Roitman

Nadja Bobyleva

Nadja Bobyleva was born in Moscow in 1983 where, at the age of seven, she attended the Klass Center art and theatre school. After moving to Cologne, she took acting classes with Bettina Dorn and her mother Natascha Bobyleva. In 2001, she made her cinema debut as the punk »Asi« in Vanessa Jopp’s Engel and Joe, followed by numerous film and television roles. From 2002 to 2006, Bobyleva studied Acting at Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media. She won the Günter Strack Television Award for her portrayal of a gifted teenage girl in Vivian Naefes Raus ins Leben (Out into Life) in 2003. Overall she has been involved in over forty TV films and series as well as several movies. Alongside her acting career, Bobyleva writes and directs her own short films. Father. Mother. Me. is her feature film debut as director.