Olesya Lakshtanova

'Something to Hold (on to)' is a 10-minute docu-fictional film about staying present with someone living closer to suffering than you are, without losing yourself in the process. 

This project began with my own numbness - with watching violence on a screen from somewhere safe, and becoming dissociated from my body, my feelings, and the people around me. This work became a way of looking for a route back - through physicality, and eventually through something as simple as sitting with another person and asking how they were. That conversation gave me something no image had: grounding. Their presence made the screen matter differently. 

The film follows two friends in a train carriage - a real space in the Netherlands, where this conversation could naturally happen, and a metaphor for the journey the dialogue takes them on, moving closer and further from each other's reality, until they land somewhere steadier, together. One was born in Russia but never lived there, and the other’s family is in Iran. The first has been avoiding this conversation - and the film is the encounter that follows when she finally asks. The audio is a pre-recorded dialogue built from real conversations; the visual layer is shot on iPhone, handheld, raw - holding documentary honesty alongside choreographed presence.