FI/DK/BG 2019. PC: Making Movies Oy / Kirstine Barfod Film / Soul Food. P: Kaarle Aho, Kai Nordberg.
Documentary.
D: Tonislav Hristov. SC: Tonislav Hristov, Kaarle Aho. Cin: Alexander Stanishev. M: Petar Dundakov. S: Jacques Pedersen. ED: Anne Jünemann, Tonislav Hristov. Larp expert: Mike Pohjola.
Featuring: Veera Lapinkoski, Ville Oksanen, Asta Tikkanen, Slava Doycheva, Heikki Oksanen, Mike Pohjola, Mikael Saarinen.
Loc: Poland, Bulgaria, Finland.
87 min
Premiere: 23 Aug 2019 - distribution: Pirkanmaan Elokuvakeskus r.y.
Vimeo link viewed for Jussi Awards, on a 4K tv screen at home, 11 March 2020.
Official introduction: "Veera, 25, tries to cope with her childhood traumas. She visits therapy. It helps but not enough. She participates in LARP events. In LARP events (live action role-playing games) the participants acquire new personae, strive to assume the story and the values of their fictional characters, perform tasks in fictional locations in constant interaction with other characters."
"While larping Veera becomes V. V can perform tasks that Veera is unable to achieve. And among larpers Veera (and V) finds friends and soulmates such as all young people long for".
"Veera has not met her father in 14 years. Father drank and abused his children until mother threw him out".
"Veera has a brother, Ville, 29, who is mentally handicapped. Ville meets father every now and then, and they have started to drink together. Ville is also a victim of bullying. Usually the bullies are people who do not realize that Ville is handicapped."
"Veera tries to help her brother also by guiding him to larp. Most of all she tries to steer the magic of larping to beat her fears and the ghosts of her past. She wants to confront her father".
"The battle to overcome childhood trauma is a physical effort and an arduous mental challenge for a young person whose childhood has been broken by a parent's alcoholism and violence. Incredibly numerous young people live alone trying to cope with the exhaustion caused by traumata without channels to face or tools to cope with childhood fears and experiences of threat."
"The Magic Life of V offers a means to access young people for whose a complete turn in life is the best solution. Veera's strong willpower to survive and skill to find means to deal with traumata can be an empowering experience. The movie is an authentic testimony on overcoming trauma and how you don't have to do it alone. Rebuilding faith in other people is possible."
A word from the director:
"I have always been interested in the border between fact and fiction. To which extent are the persons of documentary films real? To which extent do they play roles which they experience as real? When I met Veera I saw at once the cinematic and philosophic potential of the subject. For once I was able to move freely between fact and fiction without ethical problems because it is the very subject of the movie: the characters do so themselves to survive." - Tonislav Hristov
AA: The Magic Life of V, Tonislav Hristov's most ambitious film to date, is an enterprising, creative and daring experiment bringing together various disparate elements which do make sense when they are put together.
We have a live action role play (LARP) community in which Veera belongs and which has events in an ancient castle in Poland and battlegrounds in Bulgaria.
We have a history of family violence: Veera's father is an alcoholist who has neglected and abused his family.
Veera has experienced what we in Finland call "lasinen lapsuus", "a childhood of glass". In a child's eyes alcoholic parents turn into monsters.
Veera has also a brother with disability: at age one the brother had high fever and received permanent brain damage. Veera takes care of him and tries to protect him from the father whom the brother visits from time to time.
In the LARP community Veera's best friend gives her a confession of coming out as a Lesbian, having lived all her life in a lie.
The Magic Life of V is a tale of the therapeutic possibilities of role playing. Role playing can be a way to face even the hardest of truths.
To add to the Pirandellian complexity: this is officially a documentary film, but the characters act their roles as themselves. These situations could not have been recorded via a candid camera. There is even a father - daughter encounter.
I am reminded of classic titles of social psychology such as Erving Goffman's The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life and Eric Berne's Games People Play.
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