The little girl is at the kitchen table looking with longing at her mother on a cellphone screen. The mother is far, far away and can’t come home. This is the situation shown in Russian director Anna Artemyeva’s poignant and intimate short Don’t Hesitate to Come for a Visit, Mom, screening this week at Visions Du Réel and also selected for Hot Docs.
Who is the mother on the screen? It is none other than Artemyeva herself. The footage of her three-year-old daughter Grania was shot by her husband, Artur Sokolov.
“Actually, the crew was my family,” Artemyeva explains. She was directing remotely from Europe where she was studying as part of the Doc Nomads master degree in documentary filmmaking. Her husband and daughter were back in Russia. They couldn’t join her because of visa issues.
“I was thinking that I would never make a personal film [like this] because it is not fair for the family, for the kids, parents or relatives,” Artemyeva recalls. Her assignment was to make a documentary about the “biggest pain” that she was suffering at that time – and that, of course, was being separated from her family.
“When I was talking in the morning, in the evening and in the middle of the day, I felt there was some really strong energy between us,” Artemyeva remembers of her conversations with her daughter. “I just asked my husband, please, some time, you can put the camera next to Grania. Just record it, maybe not for a film but for a family story.”
At the time, the director was in Brussels, in the third semester of her Doc Nomad studies.
It was when she saw what eventually became the final shot of the film that Artemyeva decided to make the documentary as more than a family movie. This is an image of the daughter falling asleep with the cellphone showing her beloved mother still in her hand.
The director was calling the shots from afar, asking her husband not to talk to Grania while he was shooting. She wanted him to emphasise her loneliness and solitude.
Artemyeva may be a student at Doc Nomads but she is an experienced cinematographer and director of animation. She studied at the renowned VGIK school in Moscow. She has worked many times with Russian director, Elena Laskaki.
“I was working in the documentary industry for the last 20 years but when my younger daughter was born, I was super scared of the political situation in Russia and I decided to leave the country,” she explains what led her to Doc Nomads. “I was feeling I needed to save my kids and give them another future.”
Artemyeva won a scholarship to Doc Nomads but couldn’t take the family with her when she started the course. She sees going on the course as the “right decision” from a professional point of view, but it took an obvious toll on the family.
Now, having been at home for many months, the director is heading to Budapest to complete the course. That has meant leaving her family behind again – but this time, thankfully, only for a few months.
Not long after she finished Don’t Hesitate to Come for a Visit, Mom, the Covid lockdown began. That gave the doc an extra resonance. Millions of other families across the world were enduring similar forced separations – and staying in touch online, just as Anna had done with her daughter.
Artemyeva isn’t sure what the future holds. She wants to continue directing documentaries but isn’t sure where she will be based: in Moscow or in Siberia (where her husband is from) or in Europe.
Yes, her daughter Grania has seen the film. “I hope she has no real trauma because of this separation. Anyway, this film helps me to talk with her. I really feel that this film is full of love – of my love to her, her love to me and my husband’s love [for] our daughter. I hope the audience will feel it.”
The director describes the film as a “letter” to her daughter which Grania can watch again when she is grown up. “I hope she will feel how much I love her. For me, this also was a huge trauma,” she says of the many months the family spent apart.
