Wednesday 19.07.1961

The starting point of SREDA (WEDNESDAY), a film that was co-produced with Russian, German, British and Finnish money, and that won the Fipresci Award (the film critics' prize) at the latest Berlin film festival, is rather bizarre. For one year Victor Kossakovsky searched obsessively for inhabitants of St. Petersburg who were born on Wednesday 19 July 1961, his own birthday, in former Leningrad. Fifty-one women and fifty men fitted the profile. In the course of time a few of these 101 people had died, others had moved to another community or abroad. But in 1995 Kossakovsky managed to capture on film all seventy remaining residents, in the street, at work or simply at home. While doing so he spent time with doctors and patients, entertainers and businessmen, construction workers and homeless people. In his unorthodox style Kossakovsky has produced a beautiful profile of people in their thirties in St. Petersburg.