NASTIA TARASOVA
director / scriptwriter / editor



Nastia graduated from the Russian State Institute of Cinematography (department of directing, workshop of Igor Gelein). She has been working with various studios since 2004, making short documentaries. In 2008, Nastia founded the Albatross Film Studio. LINAR is her first full-length film.


IRINA SHATALOVA
director of photography / producer


Irina graduated from the Russian State Institute of Cinematography, workshop of Vadim Yusov (director of photography for various films by Andrei Tarkovsky, George Danelia, Sergei Bondarchuck and many others) in 2007. Irina loves documentaries. Recently, the focus of her work has been solely on documentary projects, as she finds working in this branch of filmmaking more challenging than in others. Irina's work as a director of photography includes more than 10 films. Her work for The Light of the White Sea was awarded a Jury prize for The Best Camera at the 5th Russian Anthropological Film Festival in 2006. In 2009, she won a Prize for Excellence in Cinematography at the Open DFF "Russia" in Yekaterinburg (for Unemployed). Irina is a founding member of the Albatross Film Studio.


DMITRY SELIPANOV
composer



Dmitry began his professional music education at the age of 7 by enrolling in the Moscow Gnessin School of Music. Noe he continues his studies at the Moscow P. I. Tchaikovsky Conservatory with majors in composition, percussion and piano. Dmitry has written music for a number of projects including a feature film, documentaries and music for theater. He is also an active performer, regularly contributing to the concert life of Moscow in different styles, from a classical concert to a heavy rock show.

NELLY IVANOVA
sound director



Nelly finished the music theory department of the local Music School in her native city of Tchaikovsky. In 2008, she graduated from the Russian State Institute of Cinematography with a degree in sound engineering. Nelly's work as a sound director includes many short films, documentaries (No Borders, Faithful, Unemployed, all directed by Nastia Tarasova), and full-length feature films (The Third Desire by Sergei Velikoredchanin; Ovsyanki by Aleksei Fedorchenko).

MORE ABOUT ALBATROSS FILM STUDIO

Today, the medical service in Russia is experiencing numerous problems. Some of them are discussed in the media, while others receive no coverage at all. Very often doctors, patients, and their relatives are the only people who know the truth. One of the most important and publicly undisclosed medical problems in Russia is transplantation in children. In Russia, transplanting organs from one child to another has been prohibited since 1993. The law states that only a person of full legal age can be a donor. Taking organs from children, even with parental consent, is persecuted by law. It is absolutely impossible to certify the death of a child's brain and then transplant the organs. In Russia, 5,000 patients need transplants every year, 30% of them being children. The majority of these children die. Medical specialists claim that transplanting an adult's liver to a child is safe as long as it is done correctly. The heart, however, can only be transplanted from another child. 

When child transplantation will become possible in Russia is unknown. The specialists we have consulted while researching this topic, list a number of obstacles on the way of this process. One of them is the shortage of high-precision equipment that can certify the donor's death. Another danger is the increase in corruption. In the worst case scenario lifting a ban on child transplantation may trigger crimes of kidnapping for organs. The system has to be perfectly thought out before it can actually be implemented. Unfortunately, the word perfectly is rarely applicable to what our medical service does.

 In addition, the parents' consent is absolutely necessary for using their child's organs as transplants. Our society is in no way ready for that. No one would sign a paper that would allow taking organs from their child after his or her death. We are convinced that it is time to attract viewers' attention to this issue. 

We are very willing to get things moving, and we feel that our efforts will not be in vain. Not so long ago we were not aware of this major problem in our country. Up untill a time when a surgeon, who performed the first surgery on Linar in Moscow, showed us a picture of this boy. In this picture Linar was walking along a park lane and pushing a giant wheeled pump in front of him. After that we literally got obsessed with this story.

WE TRULY APPRECIATE YOUR ATTENTION AND SUPPORT!