Daria Litvichenko, a young filmmaker from Moscow, won the Emerging Talent Award at this year’s SmartPhilm Fest. Her film—”Pushkin and the Dragon”—dramatizes the universal hunger for friendship. Combining realism and magical realism, the iPhone-shot movie also makes the case that even in our image-dominated world,  words still matter. Although Daria is known for her skills as an animator, in this five-minute short she demonstrates mastery of live-action filmmaking. You can read how she developed her project in the interview below.

MMM:  What motivated you to become a filmmaker?

Daria: I live in Moscow. My mom has been working in theatre for several years, and as a child I was lucky enough to have access to different stages of the production. I think, seeing how a play was being created inspired me to shoot short films and start telling stories myself.

MMM:  How did you develop your filmmaking skills?

Daria: I have never taken film classes. I try to find new information about different filmmaking techniques on the internet or in books, and this helps me to develop my skills. Of course, there are filmmakers whose work really inspires me, like Wes Anderson and Jim Jarmusch.

MMM:  How did you get the idea for “Pushkin and the Dragon”?

Daria: I have always been interested in friendship and the difficulty of finding a person with whom one can feel comfortable. I wanted to make a short film that would highlight this problem, and that’s where the idea came from.

MMM: The narration is really effective. Could you talk about how you developed it?

Daria: Thank you! The narration was originally planned to be just a short story. I liked the idea of two people whose friendship could exist only in their letters. Then I thought that it would be great to visualize it and make a short film.

MMM: What equipment did you use?

Daria: I used iPhone 5c, Filmic Pro and a fisheye lens to shoot the video, and Adobe Premiere Elements to edit my short film.

MMM: Your two actors are perfect for their roles. Could you tell us how you found them?

Daria: Alice and Julia are my close friends. I told my idea to them, and both agreed to help me.

MMM:  The performances are compelling. As the director, how did you to help them master their roles?

Daria: We discussed what the characters were like and wrote the letters that the girls send to each other in the story. Though the letters weren’t used in the film, making up all the things that could be discussed through their correspondence was very exciting and helped to define the characters.

MMM:  During the production, did you encounter any big difficulty?

Daria: As an amateur filmmaker, I had never heard about the need to have a license to use music in a short film before. When I accidentally came across this information, the film was almost ready. I had to spend a lot of time looking for the music that I could use. Fortunately, nowadays there are a lot of resources that make music licensing much easier.

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You can learn more about Daria’s work by visiting her vimeo channel. She says that she’s always happy to hear feedback, which you can give her on her Facebook page.

“Pushkin and the Dragon” has been chosen as a Mobile Movie of the Week by the editors of MobileMovieMaking.com.