

One day, Dutch film maker van der Horst was given her inheritance: 6 square meters, one sixth of a small, wooden house in the Russian countryside where her mother grew up. It was as if life had handed her a card she felt forced to play. She began a journey into the past, back into the childhood of her Russian mother and her five sisters, all of whom struggled with fear, famine and war in Stalin’s Russia; experiences that left them scarred to their very soul. Aliona’s quest into the lives and fate of her family becomes a loving, poignant, and poetic film with Chekhovian characters. Accompanied by the magical animation of acclaimed Italian artist Simone Massi, unimaginable events in the Soviet past are given an immediate charge. Along with the stories of ordinary people living in the small farmhouse, the film maker tells the tale of Soviet terror, immense bravery and a fear that has never left those four walls.

My Mom Jayne
2025

Anna Nicole Smith: You Don't Know Me
2023

The Class of ‘92
2013

Heart of a Dog
2015

Directed by John Ford
1971

Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country
2008

Birth of the Living Dead
2013

As I Was Moving Ahead, Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty
2000

More Brains! A Return to the Living Dead
2011

Ex Libris: The New York Public Library
2017