Extremist Alice, by Vladlena Sandu
Amsterdam Fringe Festival x Perdu
This event takes place on multiple days and times: also on 11.09 at 19:00, 12.09 at 18:30, 13.09 at 21:15.
“I need police, I need political asylum.” A move to say goodbye to the past and build a new life. But to start a new life, you have to remember everything that happened in the past and tell immigration officials about your past.
All refugees go through this procedure (in 2023, about 50,000 people, including Alice, applied for asylum in the Netherlands). By sharing her story with immigration officials in the prison at Schiphol Airport, Alice hopes to find freedom and a new homeland.
A personal and moving theatre performance that tells the story of Alice, a transgender activist who grew up in Russia, where her own identity faced political repression.
Vladlena Sandu was born in Crimea, Ukraine (USSR). After her parents’ divorce, she moved to her mother’s birthplace, Grozny, in the Chechen Republic. In 1994, the Chechen War began, and she grew up under war conditions for four years. In 2016, she graduated from VGIK, in film directing. In 2019, she graduated from the Studio of Theatre Direction. Her graduation documentary “Holy God” is about Sandu’s memories of the Chechen war. “Holy God” was selected at many international film festivals (among which Leipzig DOC, Rotterdam Film Festival) and won several awards.
The next film “Eight Images from the life of Nastya Sokolova” premiered at the Rotterdam Film Festival and was awarded the 2018 Silver Eye Award by the Institute of Documentary Film (Czech Republic). At the start of the Russian war against Ukraine (March 2022), Sandu escaped from Russia. Now Sandu lives and works in Amsterdam. There she was able to complete “No Nation Without Culture”, which was selected at many festivals and won the award for Best Short Film 2023 at the GoEast IFF (Germany). In 2023, Sandu directed a new autobiographical theatre production, “The Rainbow Cinema”, which received the Best Amsterdam Fringe 2023 Award.