DAU: The Immersive Film Project That Built a Soviet State

The Hollywood Reporter chronicles Ilya Khrzhanovsky’s DAU saga—a bold, years-long experiment that transformed a Kharkiv film set into a sealed Soviet-era microstate, producing hundreds of hours of footage and multiple films/ installations, now culminating in the 165-minute mother film DAU premiering at Venice. Amid decades of rumors and controversy over on-set life, and amid Ukraine’s objections due to Russia connections, the project persists through new edits, eight additional Dau films, and a bespoke VOD platform, reframing cinema as a quantum, multi-state work that challenges traditional histories.