Katya is portrayed as a romantic whose ideals are repeatedly tested by a series of disappointing affairs with men at The Institute.
Within the universe of "DAU," "Katya Tanya" emerges as a poignant narrative that focuses on the lives of two women, Katya and Tanya, played by real-life residents of Kharkiv. The film strips away the conventional and dives into the raw, unscripted lives of its protagonists, blurring the lines between documentary and feature film. This approach provides an authentic glimpse into the personal and professional lives of the characters, offering viewers a relatable and deeply human story. DAU. Katya Tanya
Love, Bureaucracy, and Female Subjectivity in "DAU. Katya Tanya" Katya is portrayed as a romantic whose ideals
Directed by Jekaterina Oertel and Ilya Khrzhanovsky, Katya Tanya is perhaps the most accessible and yet the most viscerally disturbing entry in the 14-film cycle. Stripped of the abstract physics metaphors found in films like DAU. Nora Mother or DAU. The Conformist , this film presents a raw, claustrophobic two-hander. It asks a single, brutal question: What happens to intimacy when there are no rules, no privacy, and no escape? This approach provides an authentic glimpse into the
Critically, the DAU project blurs the line between script and reality. The actresses (Radmila Shchegoleva as Katya and Marina Kleshcheva as Tanya) lived within their roles for years. Thus, the on-screen tension between Katya and Tanya feels painfully authentic: it is the friction of two souls trying to retain humanity while their environment demands they become cogs. Their conflicts—over a man, over a moral compromise, over a scrap of dignity—are microcosms of the larger Soviet tragedy. The system does not need to break them physically; it merely needs to ensure they never fully trust one another.