I had the pleasure of chatting with the award-winning New York/LA based writer|director Nadia Bedzhanova, and her producer, Lilit Abgarian, about their new introspective film, BEWARE OF DOG, which had it's World Premiere at the 2020 Slamdance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.
This intriguing film speaks to many topical issues facing the world today including LGBTQ, mental health, addiction and immigration issues as the film leads us on a journey with its characters through Moscow, Berlin and New York City.
The cinematography was provided by Theodore Guerlain and Igor Kropotov and the film stars talented actors Buddy Duress, Marina Vasileva and Paula Knüpling.
Emily Clark: Why this story? How did you come to write this particular story?
Nadia Bedzhanova: The original idea stems from my personal history with obsessive compulsive disorder and immigration. This year will be my tenth anniversary of living in the States. My current producer, Lilit has similar immigration history. We wanted to make something about that. Also, I was thinking about obsessive compulsive disorder for so long because this subject is underrepresented. I don't know many movies where the character has something. My favorite film [that addresses it] is "As Good as It Gets" with Jack Nicholson, but it's a 90's film and nothing [has come out] since then. Today, however, there's a lot of coverage on mental health is coming out right now which is amazing because people who don't know what it is [need to]. It helps to understand how we actually feel with all these struggles. And then Lilit has these different stories but they kind of all work together--we're all alone in the city, but we're also struggling with some kind of condition or addiction: addiction to social media, addiction to drugs, social media, or to toxic relationships, for example. Every character has a different kind of addiction or mental condition. I wrote it in three different languages. For Russia, I wrote it in Russian and the actors made it happen in the best way I could imagine.
Emily Clark: There's one scene where your character, Marina, is sitting on the edge of the roof and she mentions Chekhov. I think it's really interesting [that you mention Chekhov here]. Who are some of your influences?
Nadia Bedzhanova: Well, first of all, it's my perception of life and of all the people I met in New York and the generation... not the lost generation but still, we're kind of in this situation... where the world is on the verge of an environmental and mental breakdown. We don't know how many years the planet can live or what we can do because it's kind of hopeless right now. But there's this inspiration. Larry Clark influenced me when I was younger, I watched all his movies. Dostoevsky, of course, I read all his books. Crime and Punishment is still relevant. He [Dostoevsky] was clearly bipolar but he wasn't diagnosed back then. And that monologue of Nina is from "Seagull." Also, for me for example, I have this therapy where I'm remembering or learning a poem or a monologue from a classic, [and] I'm able to move or walk straightforward without these little compulsions.
Emily Clark: I love the way you portray your characters. It feels very authentic. Did you primarily film in Berlin? When you were writing the script, did you write the cities into the script or did that come later?
Nadia Bedzhanova: There were a lot of locations in three cities. I wanted to cover Moscow and New York because I live in both. I wanted to have an ode to it. Now that the political situation is not very nice, I don't know what we can do. Being Russian in America is a very ambiguous question.
Emily Clark: What is that like today in Trump's America?
Nadia Bedzhanova: I chose my home. All the legacy and inspiration and all this suffering over the Russian soul is still in me. My family is still there and my history and childhood. Of course now, what they are doing is killing people. They don't let us lead normal lives. But I wanted to show it. We're struggling everywhere. We're all the same. And there's something that not up to us that is not fair, including the planet and the global warming situation. All we can do is make movies about it and make as many people as we can to see them minimum, but the more the merrier.
Emily Clark: Tell me about your cinematography. There's this amazing scene where Marina's by the pool and her OCD is coming back. The way you filmed with her arm in the water, it felt like she's between two worlds. The way that you filmed created this division for us cinematically speaking so that we can see what's beneath the surface, as well as what's going on in her mind and above.
Nadia Bedzhanova: I film a lot by myself and I work as a DP a sometimes, like a one person orchestra sometimes. I direct and shoot first and do videos by myself. I started with the camera in my hand and that was my way, first of all, another way of therapy because I was just cropping out excessive information that would overwhelm me. So when I would look into the camera, I don't have the obsession that causes compulsion. The camera really helped me to focus and I can't imagine myself without it. Of course, I have amazing DP's who helped me, who I'll mention in a second. For future films I want to have a bigger crew and just be concentrated on the story and the actors. I was filming by myself some of the scenes and that was also the way to get closer and make it very intimate. For example, for scenes with Buddy, it was Lilit and me and Buddy, the three of us, because he would never do or say those things in front of 30 people. He would try to act cool or something, but with us he was open and shared all his inner demons. We are so lucky to have it on camera. I also want to thank two of my DP's. One is in Russia. His name is Theodore Guerlain. He helped me with most of the Moscow scenes, he shot them. He's a young, talented DP and another one is Igor Kropotov. He's one of my best friends from New York. He's also Russian and went to NYU for photography. He's one of the best of the best. I definitely want him to film my next project. Their style is so great. It's all kind of raw. For this project I didn't want it to be light because it would lose the raw feeling, especially with Buddy, how he feels right now. I do photography as well as a hobby. For example, yesterday, we had a little day off from the screenings. I went to this old railroad station in Heber City. I was walking with my camera and it felt so good. Everything was so stressful with interviews, you meet a lot of people, and I still have OCD, so I need some breaks. For me, the best break was to walk, look at the mountains, take pictures, and find this old railroad.
Emily Clark: I noticed in the film you have this one scene where (she) is on the grass in nature. It's powerful because it's so different from the chaos of the city and I think a lot of times as humans we're disconnected from nature and it goes back to what you were talking about with climate change and all the things we're afraid of coming to light. But I think it also goes back to a deep longing inside of all of us to be connected to nature. I love that you brought that into the film.
Nadia Bedzhanova: Nature her reason out of the anxiety of the big cities and from online moments when we're very anxious. Our attention is focused everywhere and in nature ... it's her safe place, that's why she's going there before she goes to New York. I have my personal connection to Russian nature. I grew up with my grandma every summer we spent in a little country house and I remember those times and I so much. There's no such time like that anymore. Since we're all the time living in big cities, and Moscow is huge, New York is like wow, we don't have any moment to just breathe out and take a rest. Before I was like oh, it's all bullshit... I don't want to spend time doing nothing and why? Now I realize that we go for mental stability at a minimum.
Emily Clark: Lilit, I wanted to ask how you came to meet Nadia and how you came to be a part of the project.
Lilit Abgarian: Nadia and I met about three years ago... we both attended a Steven Soderbergh screening. We met and started talking and right away we realized that we have a very similar mindset and we both want to make movies. [From there] we started developing a script. We started with Nadia's personal experience of OCD.
When I met Josh Safdie and he introduced me to Buddy Duress, that's when we started filming Buddy and that's how the project started developing. We realized that it's all about the same topics which are mental disorders, anxiety and big city living.
Emily Clark: What do you hope the audience will take away from your film?
Nadia Bedzhanova: The main goal of this movie is to raise awareness of OCD, bipolar disorder and mental disorders [in general]. We want many people to see it, that's our main goal. We're hoping to get this movie into more festivals and to reach as many people as possible.
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