Autumn (Russia) by Daria Elkonina

Daria Elkonina’s Autumn Joins the Auteur Cinema Archive

The Auteur Cinema Archive is proud to announce the inclusion of Autumn (2019, Russia) by Daria Elkonina—a meditative, elliptical short film that lingers on the edge of narrative, blending tension, landscape, and silence into an emotionally rich experience. With sparse dialogue, evocative visuals, and an atmosphere thick with unease, Autumn exemplifies the power of restraint in cinematic storytelling.

Set in rural Russia, Autumn opens with a woman wading through waist-deep water and a man slowly crossing a river. A train roars in the distance. A ferry idles. A room sits in quiet disarray. The suggestion of a violent event looms—but nothing is directly shown or explained. Instead, Elkonina allows the audience to dwell in uncertainty, threading together fragments of moments, gestures, and landscapes into a quietly harrowing meditation on trauma, time, and memory.

The film was produced by Elkonina with fellow students from the Moscow School of New Cinema, where she studied editing. Their collaborative process emphasized presence over pre-planning: locations were chosen spontaneously based on natural light and atmosphere, allowing the material to evolve intuitively rather than rigidly follow a script. This freedom lends Autumn a sense of organic tension—every image feels found, rather than staged, and every silence hums with potential meaning.

Curator Kris De Meester on the film’s inclusion:
"Autumn is built on extraordinary restraint. Elkonina keeps emotional intensity simmering beneath the surface, never letting it boil over. She gives the audience space—space to listen, to watch, and to wonder. That takes courage. It’s a masterful example of how suggestion can be more powerful than exposition. Her command of image, silence, and atmosphere makes Autumn a vital addition to the Archive."

As noted by Kerry Jones of Alchemy Film & Arts:
"Autumn is oblique and beguiling, hinting at narrative possibilities while centralising the texture of time… a minimalist drama pairing beautiful, evocative landscapes with intimate, unnerving close-ups."

Selected for the Brussels Independent Film Festival in 2020 and the Rome Independent Film Festival, Autumn earned praise for its stark aesthetic and psychological depth. Critics and programmers have noted its minimalist beauty, its unnerving emotional ambiguity, and its refusal to offer easy resolution.

By including Autumn in the Auteur Cinema Archive, we honor a filmmaker at the beginning of what promises to be an extraordinary career. Daria Elkonina’s work affirms that cinema can move us not by declaring, but by withholding—by letting the unsaid echo louder than words.