RemainsПотроха

After the funeral she learns that his body was mutilated in the war and that he left a large debt. Collectors and criminals arrive; fear becomes daily life.

To pay, Khalga begins collecting and selling offal, and slowly loses hold of familiar reality. Violence, animal death and human loss wake a deeper memory in her, where grief is no longer hers alone.

In the final movement she becomes a white bird, leading the other mothers whose grief found no form.

Genre and theme A myth-infused psychological horror about the consequences of postcolonial trauma: how inherited violence and personal loss erode identity, and how accepting death, memory and compassion opens a way to radical transformation.

Wars are happening everywhere right now. We find ourselves inside a machine that keeps operating whatever any one person chooses. Remains looks at what this machinery does to the people inside it, through one mother and one son.

The story is based on real events. At a soldier’s funeral, relatives said it would have been better if he had been killed in combat: his mutilation was considered worse than death.

“The loss of a mother’s son is understood in any language, any culture. In this film, the mother is also a homeland, and the son is also an entire people.”

Ella Manzheeva

Jiga is what Chingiz Aitmatov called a mankurt: a man whose memory has been erased, who can no longer recognize his own mother. The mankurt exists wherever states require men to forget themselves in order to serve. The film refuses the silence around that grief and makes the loss public, political and mythic at once.

Remains has not been released yet. On Ella Manzheeva’s debut feature, The Gulls (Berlinale Forum 2015):

• An impressive debutThe Upcoming ↗
• Elegantly shotScreen International ↗
• Cleverly observed without preachinessEast European Film Bulletin ↗
• Berlin reviewThe Hollywood Reporter ↗