A Winner is Seen At the Start

While staying in a sanatorium with her unstable mother and her younger sister, Mila (17) joins the new experimental swimming school. The accidental death of one of the girls alters the course of events and reveals corruption schemes, doping and controversial relationships.

Synopsis

Mila (17) is staying in a post-soviet sanatorium with her depressive unstable mother Dalida and her younger sister. When Dalida suddenly decides to go on a trip with her lover, she leaves her two daughters alone in the sanatorium. Mila is tired of her mother’s mood swings and finds her comfort in swimming. Soon she starts to notice a team of girls who are training for the open water competition. She gets intrigued by them and tries to find a way to join the team.

At the beginning she doesn’t have any chance, since the girls swim much faster than Mila. However, when the best swimmer of the team accidentally dies, Mila takes over. She soon discovers an experimental nature of the school – all the girls wear portable headphones and listen to the hypnotising voice that intertwines with the meditative music. The technique is supposed to unblock the hidden potential and boost the performance. During the practices, Mila starts to see very powerful images that mix memories and reality. When the team wins the first competition, Mila gets totally convinced that the method of the school works.

The girls start training for the regional competition with the premise to move to the international level. The school admits a new girl Akmaral, who has better results than Mila. Desperate to maintain her position in the team, Mila tries to bribe her way through.

On the day of the regional competition, Mila accidentally discovers the truth behind the high performance of her team. Apparently, the school was using microdoses of psychedelics as a doping and all the mental practices were just a cover-up. Shocked from such a discovery, she nevertheless joins her team at the starting line. After a sharp whistle, all the girls including Mila run into the water, but after a couple of strokes, she decides to stop and quit the race.

Director statement

A Winner is Seen at the Start is a film that questions the meaning of a victory and the challenging journey towards it. It’s a story about the choices we make when we find ourselves in a system that is much bigger and stronger than us. I feel that, nowadays, we immerse so deeply into the endless race that we don’t even have time to stop and re-evaluate our choices.

Mila lives a privileged life, she never had a reason to use corruption up until the point when she does. When she thinks that the system of her swimming school is not being fair on her, she decides to bribe her way through. Soon she realises that all her worries, her efforts, her success and her fears were worthless, since she was just a puppet in someone else’s game.

Another important theme in this film is the complexity of mother-daughter relationships that unfolds with a backdrop of modern Kazakhstan. Mila grows to realize that she despises her mother’s life values and choices. She rebels against them by attempting to pursue a different life path, but still falls into repeating some of her mistakes. I believe that no matter which external evil we fight, sometimes we find it in the deep core of our own nature.

As a woman living in Kazakhstan, I am still trying to define my own idea of womanhood and my take on traditional and moral values. It is a contradictory society, where early marriages are praised, but divorces are shameful. Where it is still acceptable to be a “second” wife, but extramarital sex is condemned. I put myself in the shoes of Mila, who is trying to understand the role of a woman by looking at her mother and estranged grandmother while discovering her own desires and needs.

Despite the fact that the story speaks about the issues of modern Kazakhstan, I strongly believe that it will appeal to a broader international audience.

Director biography

Originally from Kazakhstan, Zhannat Alshanova (1987) is a London-based writer/director and producer. She graduated with an MA in filmmaking from the London Film School. Her work has been shown at numerous international film festivals such as Cannes, TIFF, Sundance, Locarno, Clermont-Ferrand, Camerimage, and has screened at prestigious institutions such as Barbican Centre (UK) and The Asian Film Archive (Singapore). Alshanova’s most recent short film History of Civilization (2020) won the Pardino d’argento award at Locarno film festival.

She is currently developing two feature projects. Mother Tongue was presented at Asian Project Market (Busan Film Festival), where it won the ARTE development award. A Winner is Seen at the Start is supported by the Hubert Bals Fund, BoostNL, the Film Centre Serbia development award (WEMW), the Pop-up film residency award and the Best Woman Director award from European Women's Audiovisual Network. Alshanova is a Berlinale Talents alumna. In 2021, she founded her own independent production company – accidental films.

Huidige status

The project is currently in development (script).

Goals

We are looking for financing partners, potential co-producers, interest from sales agents, festivals, domestic distributors and broadcasters/platforms. A third-party co-production is possible on the basis of sharing positions in the shooting crew and/or post-production.