Three Stories

Three Stories presents three tales of domestic murder carried out by three characters: Tykhomirov, a clerk who kills his promiscuous landlord; Ophelia, a hospital record archivist who takes revenge on her mother for abandoning her as a child; and a granddaughter who poisons her grandfather with rat poison. Originally, Muratova intended these stories to be read as “horror” but opted to exaggerate them within a grotesque style that renders them instead as ironic and farcical. Three Stories marked the beginning of Muratova’s fascination with complex, multilayered narratives composed of individual, often anecdotal stories, interwoven with the unexpected yet inevitable.

Preceded by:

Letter to America
Kira Muratova, 1999, Ukraine, 20m
Russian with English subtitles

Between recording a video letter to his friends in America, a bohemian writer, Ihor, drops in on his tenant Lena to demand the rent—the only income he has to live on. Lena, who is several months behind in payments, offers to pay by other means. Framed as an artist video, the film was shot in two days within Muratova’s apartment in Odesa and features the poet Serhiy Chetvertkov, who also wrote the screenplay, and Ute Kilter, an art critic and performer prominent in Odesa at the time.