“I felt that these people are stronger than us in some way”

A documentary film by Maria Finkelstein and Svetlana Muzychenko “Let Me Win” about the Special Olympics, in which athletes with mental disabilities participate, was released on the Russia 1 TV channel. The film was shown for the first time at the Moscow International Film Festival this year, and from today it can be viewed in the KION and Okko online cinemas. On the eve of the TV premiere, the director Maria Finkelstein answered questions Julia Shagelman.

Tell us how the idea for this film came about.

— For me, this story began more than two years ago. Before that, I took part in the filming of the official film about the Olympics in Sochi, I led a group that filmed the upper cluster, extreme sports. Svetlana Muzychenko, a very experienced documentary filmmaker, also worked with me there.

Olga Slutsker, President of Special Olympics in Russia, saw this film and knew our Ostrov studio. At the beginning of 2021, she invited us to Kazan, where the qualifying competitions for the Special Olympics were held, while Sweden refused to host the Games, and the main office, which is located in Washington, turned to Russia. All this began to spin, preparations began for the Special Olympics in Kazan, I gathered my team and went there.

– Before that, did you know something about the Special Olympics, about this movement, in general about the life of people with mental disabilities?

– No, I was completely far from this topic, like the guys who went with me. But this film changed us all. For example, I saw how a young cameraman is filming an athlete with cerebral palsy, how she runs on skates and falls constantly, then rises and runs again, then falls again and rises again … And he starts crying and tells me: “Masha, I I remember how we filmed the Olympics, where if an athlete falls, he leaves the race. And here this girl ran to the end, yes, she reached the slowest of all, but she did!” We were all surprised how different it was from the regular Olympics. There are no losers, everyone is worried about each other, everyone supports each other, makes friends, falls in love. Coaches who generally receive a penny put their heart and soul into the athletes and cheer for them as if they were their own children, because not all Special Olympics athletes have families: many from special institutions, from boarding schools, orphanages … And I realized that a movie could really turn out from this story, and suggested that Svetlana do the project with me, because I would not have been able to raise it alone. So we worked together, we breathed, as they say, in unison.

— How did you find your heroes and why did you choose these ones? What was it about their stories that drew you in?

— We wanted to show the entire geography of the movement, so it was important for us that the heroes were from different regions. In Kazan, at the competitions, we found two people who immediately interested us: Roman Zinurov, a figure skater who pairs with an ordinary girl, without mental disabilities, and Irina Nikitina, she runs a short track. Ira’s sister went to live in the USA back in the 90s. We saw some kind of nerve in this – such different fates for two sisters. Moreover, the one who, in general, was doomed to a bleak existence in a boarding school, thanks to sports and her will, became a multiple champion of the Special Olympics.

And Roma is from St. Petersburg, and this was important for us, because there, in fact, the movement of the Special Olympics in our country began in Soviet times. But Roma himself is a very bright hero, with a difficult fate. We couldn’t foresee some things at all, for example, during the filming of the film, Roman’s brother, the lead singer of the Inveterate Scammers group, died. We filmed the hero during the funeral ceremony, and this episode entered the picture.

– What about the other guys?

– I wanted to show that special children are born not only in families of alcoholics and drug addicts, as is often thought. They can appear in any family, in absolutely healthy people. Therefore, we chose a family from Ufa, where the father is an outstanding surgeon, where our athlete with autism has healthy brothers and sisters, and his mother, a skiing coach, works not only with him, but also with other special children, she already has a person 30 such wards.

And on Sakhalin, we found two wonderful athletes, whom doctors once almost gave up on, and their coach, a man who at one time made a good administrative career, could sit quietly in his warm office at the Ministry of Sports, but he dropped everything and went to work with special children.

– When you watch a movie, you see, in fact, prosperous characters. Two boys live in wonderful families, surrounded by love and care, Irina and Roman had difficult moments in the past, but they are left behind. However, this is far from a complete picture of how people with mental disabilities live in our country. Is there a deliberate embellishment in this?

– Still, when we were preparing the film, we chose exactly those athletes who were supposed to get to the Special Olympics in Kazan. So these are initially the strongest athletes, not just people with mental disabilities. In addition, before that I watched different films about autists, about people with Down syndrome – they are often very tearful and cause a feeling of pity for the characters. And here I felt that these people are somehow stronger than us, and you can make a movie about this.

“Personally, I didn’t have enough context in the film. You show the history of the movement in the USA, how it originated, precisely with the aim of changing this attitude in society and removing the stigma from such people. But say almost nothing about today’s Russian realities. Yes, you mention special institutions and the terrible order in them, but you do not delay attention on this.

– You see, we simply could not fit everything into the picture, so the context you are talking about is presented quite concisely. The film is not about that. Our task with Svetlana was, first of all, to convey the stories of our heroes to the mass audience, and yes, probably not to scare them away. After the broadcast on Rossiya, the film will be released on online platforms – we want as many people as possible to see it. But even if only five or ten people watch our film, and suddenly there are parents of a special child among them and they find out that they have such an option that they can try some kind of special sports section and give their son or daughter a chance, an incentive, to change their life, it will already be good.

Therefore, we focused more on sports, on victories, albeit small ones, but very important for special people. If we filmed their life in boarding schools, orphanages, it would be a completely different movie.

– The film repeatedly sounds the idea that sports for people with mental disabilities is their chance for socialization, integration into society. But after all, this is still the lot of the few, not everyone has sports talents, so sport does not solve the problem of inclusion of the majority of such people. Now that you’ve gotten to know them and their families, perhaps you have an idea of ​​what a systemic solution could be? For example, for several years now there have been discussions around the law on distributed custody, as well as on assisted living for people with disabilities.

– To be honest, I did not know anything about these laws and amendments when we just started filming. But we worked on the film for two years, I got very deep into the subject, and now I’m really starting to think about it. I even remembered how I studied at school and we had a boy who seemed strange to us, now I understand that he probably had mental disorders, but then we didn’t know anything about it, no one explained to us, and many over he was bullied. Therefore, I believe that inclusion should begin from childhood – with explanations, with informing that these people are the same as you and me. They should live a full life, work, they do not need to be hidden. We all need to start somehow to recover, to get rid of the cruelty that we have.