If We Had Tomorrow

Director's Statement

“If We Had Tomorrow” - is a surrealistic short film. The initial idea came to me a year ago when I was sitting on the terrace and looking at a patio torch. It was an instant thought, “A man, a woman, a child, and a dog”. And then by looking at the flame, I started developing this thought further and thinking out loud “the lighter turns into a candle… fire, water, air, and soil”. Four elements - four characters. I left this idea on its own for about a year. I have always been interested in surrealists and their works ever since I saw an exhibition of Rene Magritte’s artworks in the Albertina Museum in Vienna. In the spring of 2019, I was studying at NYU London and I went to see Dorothea Tanning’s exhibition at the Tate Modern museum. It inspired me in various ways but there was one specific painting that stood out for me - it’s called “Birthday” (1942) and it portrayed an endless corridor of doors. This image stuck in my head and I kept on thinking about this corridor of doors and what it meant. I bought a book about Surrealism at Tate Modern as I walked out of the exhibition. I started reading and exploring my favorite artists in great detail - the puzzles started to come together. I decided that I wouldn’t construct a logical storyline/write the screenplay at the beginning of the process. My idea was to approach this project the same way as surrealist artists painted or created their art, and so this film should be viewed in the same way as you would view a surrealistic artwork in a museum: open to interpretation with each person determining its meaning. The main two terms that I used in my process were ‘automatism’ and ‘dreams’. Therefore, by looking at different surrealist artworks, I started to develop images in my head such as a hot air balloon with a bath attached to it, a passionate dance in the water, a child being born out of the water, the fire that transforms from one form to another… I outlined 3 different lines/aspects for myself: 1st line - literal meaning and storyline; 2nd line - surrealistic style; and 3rd line - underlying metaphors including the corridor of opportunities represented by doors and four elements (fire, air, water, and soil). Afterward, I focused on linking my four characters and four elements. In this film, the fire is the man, the air is the woman, the water is the child, and the soil is the dog. The man is fire because he is a soldier: he is passionate, impulsive, hot-tempered - both his strength and his weakness. The woman is air because she is light, caring, tender and she always keeps the fire alive. Air can exist without a fire - fire cannot exist without air. The hot-air balloon is a clear symbol of love and connection being created between fire and air. The addition of water into a hot-air balloon is a foreshadowing effect to our next scene of love-making and child-creation in the lake. The “logic” behind the creation of the lake is that the man proposes to the woman and, out of happiness, we see small pearl-like tears that form on her cheeks as she agrees to marry him. These tears are the tears of happiness that crystallize on her cheeks for a moment before dropping into the bath. The bath starts to overflow and the lake is created, from which the little boy will emerge in the future. The boy is water because children are pure and they spend nine months in a liquid-surrounding before they are born. The dog is soil because it gives a sense of nature, living things, native land, loyalty. The four elements are not only the metaphorical part of the film - it’s also structural. The film moves from fire (man) to air (woman) to water (child) to soil (dog) and back to fire (man). It is a circular structure. And, finally, the corridor of opportunities is represented by the doors that open one by one and showcase opportunities that this man could have had if there hadn’t been a war. The Russian-Ukrainian war (2014-present) is a very important subject for every Ukrainian citizen and this motivated me to find a soldier who participated in the events of this war to portray our man in the movie. All different metaphors, images, symbols, hidden messages can be interpreted into different meanings by the spectators. The only thing that should stay the same is that in any scenario of our soldier’s life - war is an obstacle to a good and happy life. People should be able to have doors available to them: they should not be taken away by war.