“You can probably ask them to give you the security camera footage if you need some images for the interview”, points out Nikita Lavretski as I’m meeting him, very fittingly, in a conference room in the basement of a hotel. Quite a telling joke – Nikita’s filmography never discards footage, in what he explains to me is his “zero-waste” approach to filmmaking. Mixing and matching popular culture, politics, and autofiction, Nikita’s films are a melting pot of images often coming from the internet, personal archives, and other visual realms sometimes deemed “uncinematic”. The young filmmaker – and one of the three visionary voices we picked last year – has been particularly prolific, releasing sometimes several no-budget films a year, and always seems to be pushing boundaries in terms of fastness, creativity and dare I say, digital, DIY punkness.

I met with Nikita on the occasion of A Date in Minsk (2023) playing in Bucharest during FFE – The European Film Festival, a first screening of his work in Romania, despite somewhat of an already legendary status among some Romanian cinephile groups. For a match made in post-modern heaven, Radu Jude moderated a talk with Nikita after the film – which, worry not, is available for all to watch and also marks our colleague Flavia Dima’s debut as a DOP on Nikita’s YouTube channel.

Inevitably, we started our conversation about internet culture while scrolling through Instagram, and ended it on Robert Pattinson and Chris Hemsworth (who should be checking his emails). In between, we discuss fiction, non-fiction and auto-fiction, Nikita’s “non-discrimination” of images, creativity and limited resources, as well as how cinema can have a much arbitrary definition today.

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The images and spaces that you work with, even if we come from different countries, to me, there’s so much familiarity in them. It’s very easy to relate to them. How are you finding Bucharest? I was watching your Instagram yesterday, and I really liked these almost Radu Jude-esque snapshots of ads and other absurd realities of the city that you captured. I think street advertisements tell a lot about how the city understands its relationship with images.

I just took photos of stuff that caught my eye. Which one is absurd? [Nikita pulls out his phone and opens Instagram].

Well, absurd in a funny way, you know… Like there’s one with a capitalistic monkey promoting some bank, I think…

Oh, yeah. This one here is a huge Taylor Swift advertisement covering like three stories of a building people are living in. She’s stealing sunlight from the Romanian people. She’s like a vampire. But, no, this is a joke. Radu [Jude] told me he used to live in a building like this and they don’t actually cover that much sunlight. It’s actually not worse than curtains. It’s fine. It’s good. Taylor Swift, you are… How do you say it…

Protecting people from UV rays.

Yeah, maybe. Yes. She’s actually good. I thought she was a villain, but she’s good. This one here is a whole bus covered in anime characters. I’m a big fan of anime.

I really like that bus, too. You know, that’s actually in Piața Revoluției, where the Revolution happened in 1989.

And here you have Ioana Grama and Sânziana Negru… Someone told me that they are like the biggest celebrities in Romania. Is it true?

I couldn’t tell you. You seem to know who they are better than me.

This is a “Beware of the Dog” sign. I just took random pictures of the city – it wasn’t like a statement or anything. But there are a lot of new images, so that’s why I was looking around. And Bucharest is a big city, you know? Right now, I live in Vilnius, which is 10 times smaller, and I’ve never really lived in big cities.

I think it’s the Mecca of cinema, too, no? There are a lot of directors who made movies in Bucharest. There’s Porumboiu’s When Evening Falls on Bucharest or Metabolism. Radu Jude also made quite a few movies about the city, although he told me people complain he doesn’t show the nice parts of Bucharest.

I don’t discriminate between images. They’re all good. Actually, it’s almost like I want to do zero-waste filmmaking. If I have some interesting footage, or if I have something in my archives, or if I have an idea of what I can film, then I want to make it into a finished product.

Speaking of these “new images” that interested you about Bucharest, your films also feature a lot of new images. How do you differentiate between the images you work with? You’ve used home movies that you’ve adapted to an internet-era discourse on images, but then, more recently, you’re also keen on digital images and these kinds of micro-narratives that belong to or come from TikTok.

I don’t discriminate between images. They’re all good. Actually, it’s almost like I want to do zero-waste filmmaking. If I have some interesting footage, or if I have something in my archives, or if I have an idea of what I can film, then I want to make it into a finished product.

With my self-titled movie Nikita Lavretsky (2019), I just had this archive from my childhood, and I thought, “Oh, maybe I can make a movie out of it”. I didn’t think it was going to be very interesting. It was like a special on my YouTube channel for 500 subscribers. I didn’t submit it to film festivals, but I still thought maybe there was indeed a product to create out of those images.

In 2022, I made Jokes About War, out of Instagram stories and TikToks of my friend, comedian Alexey Suhanok, who was doing jokes about current affairs, about the war in Ukraine. I was just looking through my Instagram feed, and there would be a story about a bomb blowing up in Kiev and then next on the feed there would appear some of his jokes. So, I just thought the movie was already there. I could just collect it.

I just try to get something out of anything that I see. There’s no differentiation. I’m not against any kind of images. If some Hollywood studio hires me to make superhero movies, I can also do that.

But, at the end of the day, your biggest resource is your creativity. I think that, even in Scorsese’s case, his biggest resource was always his creativity.

You make a joke in A Date in Minsk about how you do not envy Hollywood filmmaking, though. That maybe Scorsese doesn’t have the freedom we think he has.

It wasn’t me saying that, you know, it’s my character, but… no, it’s just a joke. Of course I know that Scorsese has much more freedom than me, actually. I just don’t want to believe it. I’m like, oh no, they’re making him do these gangster movies, when his dream is to make a movie about a date in New York. Not all of his movies are gangster movies, right? Like when he wanted to, he did a children’s movie, Hugo (2011), and then he did a horror movie, Shutter Island (2010) – which is terrible, by the way.

It’s just a joke, like wishful thinking. I’m just trying to find some leverage, to [make sense] of how I can do something special when I don’t have access to all the resources.

But I suppose the character is right in saying that a lack of resources sometimes does offer a bit more freedom with what you can create. Or do you not agree with that?

Who knows? In some way, maybe, but like… It’s not an objective fact, it’s more that it’s productive to think about it this way. That’s why maybe you can come up with more ideas. But, at the end of the day, your biggest resource is your creativity. Even if you look at Scorsese’s early work, like The Big Shave (1967), his student short film, it’s just filmed in one bathroom. But it’s one of the greatest movies about the Vietnam War and PTSD. I think that, even in Scorsese’s case, his biggest resource was always his creativity. This is what gives you more freedom of choice of what you can make. It’s about what you can imagine. If you can imagine something, then you can make it.

Doesn’t the state of technology contribute to this, as well, in terms of how accessible things may have become for filmmakers of today?

Yeah, of course. Everything is much cheaper with a digital camera, you don’t need thousands of dollars like for 35mm. But the biggest expense in Hollywood movies is not if somebody wants to film 35mm. The biggest expense is always talent. Of course, digital technology democratises filmmaking, but it’s not the most expensive thing.

In terms of this new democratisation of filmmaking, I’m thinking a lot about these TikTok series that you’re making right now, and how you’re, let’s say, mining this visual language of the internet and social media. There’s a lot of discussion nowadays about whether these new forms of media can be movies, or there’s a question if there exists a cinematic consciousness there. And of course, some people are calling this absolute bullshit.

I don’t understand [this perspective]. I have a very literal way of thinking about it. Movies are, you know, moving images, motion pictures. On TikTok, the images are moving. It’s an observable scientific fact that people are dancing and there are a lot of frames per second and that the images are moving. So, they are movies. Are you thinking about the distribution aspect? Like the fact that people are thinking, how could you release TikToks in the theatres?

There is that aspect, of course, this idea of bringing a TikTok to the big screen, that raises several questions. But I was referring more to people still being very attached to a traditional understanding of cinema.

Then they’re just conservative people who don’t like change. But it’s fine, you know. I don’t think it’s that dramatic. Movies and theatres, this phenomenon is only like 100 years old. Who cares? It’s not a big tradition. Today we have screens in our pockets, and this is like 20 years old or something. I guess before there were cell phones in like 2003, but you couldn’t really watch anything on them. Now you can. The real question is what is the point of going to the cinema if there is visual entertainment on your phone?

There’s endless amounts of it. You can watch, you know, Twitch and some cool streamers, which might be more interesting than movies and theatres. Maybe someone is afraid of the competition and they’re trying to unfairly dismiss it.

But I mean, no, it’s stupid. Because television… is television different from cinema? It’s so very arbitrary. For example, I add a lot of movies to IMDB, I’ve added over 600. And the definitions they use, they’re pretty questionable. Why is Steven Soderbergh’s Behind the Candelabra (2012) considered a TV movie? It’s made for TV, but it premiered in competition in Cannes. I think it was released theatrically in some countries, but it was produced by and released on HBO in America, so okay [you can say it’s a TV movie]. But now, there are movies, like the Netflix original movies, that are direct-to-streaming, that are not premiering in festivals and are not released in other ways – those are listed on IMDB just like regular features. This change has come only in the past 10 years. The whole category of made-for-tv movies is basically obsolete and nobody cares about the distinction whether something is made for big screens or small screens.

So, it makes you wonder whether the big screen is such a… Is it here to stay?

It’s nice to hear your confidence in the potential of these newer forms of interacting with the image. This is something that I really enjoy about your work, that you’re able to relate to and to sense this creative potential in media and internet culture, while inhabiting it.

I mean, I just wish I was part of internet culture. I wish I had more subscribers and followers.  Turns out it’s easier to get into film festivals than to get 1 million subscribers. [Nikita’s YouTube channel currently has ~1000 subscribers] So, I feel very embarrassed that you’re even interviewing me and not… the real creators from YouTube and Twitch who actually generate millions of entertainment hours. People actually get a lot of good vibes and good emotions out of their content. And out of my content, there are just hundreds, not millions of people getting mildly frustrated and annoyed, and possibly just bored. It’s a little bit crazy. I’m just on the coattails of these old structures of cinema distribution that includes film festivals. I somehow managed to game the system and get here. I don’t understand it.

I think that, for the generations growing up in the 90s and 2000s, first personal cameras and video, but then the internet were important tools in creating these spaces where we could articulate stories or autofictions about ourselves. How important has the internet been for you as an outlet for self-expression?

The internet is the greatest invention of man. What are we talking about? Without the internet, I literally wouldn’t be able to do anything. I met all my collaborators online, I published all my movies online, and that’s where people saw it. Radu [Jude] saw my movies online. My movies were never shown in Romania before yesterday, but you’ve told me you’ve already seen them.

With the internet, it’s like a new dimension of the world was discovered, or like a new layer of reality was created, where the new real things are happening. People meet, date, and work on the internet. The question is, what are we even doing outside the internet? In a lot of ways I’m a citizen of the internet.

The question is, what are we even doing outside the internet? In a lot of ways I’m a citizen of the internet.

Do you find there’s any specific dimension to it as an Eastern European? I think there’s a very specific internet culture that has been coming out of this space. I suppose there’s a certain “unhinged” fame of Eastern Europe internet culture.

I mean, as far as I can tell, every country has their own internet culture and their own memes. [But it’s more global]. Like, I recently found a list on Letterboxd about movies that are very online, so to speak, movies about online culture. I also showed it to Radu, because his movie was on the list. My Belarusian Psycho (2015) is also there, but there are much more American independent films alongside them. Radu was surprised that Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (2023) was his biggest hit in America. But I told him, no, actually, I don’t know whether consciously or not, you managed to capture this new trend or be part of this new trend in American independent cinema.

This list is called something like These films are all part of the same new wave, but I’m not sure what it’s called. And people in the comments suggest names for this wave. Post online, anti-content cinema, post-ironic online misanthropy. I’m sure these are all movies about and from people who were deeply influenced by internet culture. So, [even if we come from Eastern Europe], a lot of the same things are happening in the American landscape.

Going back to your observation about your character and not you joking about Scorsese in A Date in Minsk, I was wondering how you alternate between these fictional and non-fictional versions or personas of yourself in the films that you make. In A Date in Minsk, you’re playing yourself, to some extent, even if it’s an invented situation.

Well, in A Date in Minsk, the character is pretty close to me and a lot of things I say about myself are true, but the whole scenario in which it takes place is fictional. I think it’s a spectrum, you know, fiction, non-fiction. Nothing is ever purely fiction and nothing is ever purely non-fiction. I believe it was Godard who said that movies are also documentaries about the actors who play in them. It makes sense, because you see the actual people, their flesh and bodies. There’s always an element of reality in that. On the other hand, in every so-called non-fiction film, the director is always curating what he’s showing and the order in which he’s showing it. Otherwise, he would have to show all the hours of raw footage. Maybe the only real documentary, without any curatorship, would have to be just a list of coordinates of every atom in the universe at every point in time. That’s the real documentary. “Here we didn’t curate anything, any of the images. We just listed all the coordinates of all the atoms. It’s very objective.”

But even then, there would be the question, in which order do we list the atoms? Which atoms come first? From Earth or from other galaxies?

But as I was saying, it’s a spectrum, and somewhere in the middle there’s a border, but it’s hard to define where this border is. I’m not so obsessed about this definition, though. Actually it’s good to be somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. You can submit the same thing to both documentary film festivals and non-documentary film festivals. This is how you game the system.

Does working with yourself offer any kind of freedom?

Working with myself is just one of the resources I have. But for a more complicated production, like how it was with Love and Partnership (2016), I usually wouldn’t cast myself. I’d rather work with Chris Hemsworth, you know, but he’s not replying to my emails.

I wish I could work as an agent or manager for Hollywood actors. Because I can see what you need to do. You have to improve your reputation by working in indies and doing small parts with interesting directors and not agree to be in like…bad movies. If I had a time machine, I would go back to 2011 and become the manager of Taylor Lautner and I would make him play, you know, in an arthouse with Albert Serra. And then, he would become the Batman.

I think it would be possible because he just made the most stupid choices. He was playing in Adam Sandler comedies and some bad action movies. Meanwhile, Robert Pattinson was in Claire Denis, and Safdie brothers films. He was in a James Gray movie with like the smallest part, just carrying suitcases behind Charlie Hunnam. But it was part of the big plan to come back to blockbusters, because he’s now supposedly a serious actor, and so he became the Batman. So that’s what I mean. These actors, the Hollywood actors, they’re willing to take some artistic risks like carrying suitcases behind Charlie Hunnam. And maybe I can just convince Chris Hemsworth…

So are you Team Jacob, then?

Yeah. Yeah, I am Team Jacob.

Dora Leu

Graduated with a BA in film directing and a MA in film studies from UNATC; she's also studied history of art. Also collaborates with the Acoperisul de Sticla film magazine and is a former coordinator of FILM MENU. She's dedicated herself to '60-'70s Japanese cinema and Irish post-punk music bands. Still keeps a picture of Leslie Cheung in her wallet.