In the sprawling, controversial universe of Ilya Khrzhanovsky’s DAU project—a re-creation of a Stalin-era Soviet research institute populated by non-professional actors living under totalitarian conditions for years—most films feel like artifacts smuggled out of a crime scene. But DAU. Katya Tanya (2020) is different. It feels like the crime itself.
Directed by Jekaterina Oertel and Ilya Khrzhanovsky, Katya Tanya is perhaps the most accessible and yet the most viscerally disturbing entry in the 14-film cycle. Stripped of the abstract physics metaphors found in films like DAU. Nora Mother or DAU. The Conformist, this film presents a raw, claustrophobic two-hander. It asks a single, brutal question: What happens to intimacy when there are no rules, no privacy, and no escape?
On the surface, the plot is deceptively simple:
Katya (Radmila) is the young, emotionally volatile wife of a powerful, middle-aged scientist (Currentzis). She is an alcoholic teetering on the edge of psychosis, seeking affection through aggression. Tanya (Lidiya) is Katya’s elderly, silent mother-in-law, who shares the cramped apartment. Tanya is the domestic anchor—she cleans up the vomit, washes the glasses, and absorbs verbal abuse with a stoicism that feels both saintly and masochistic.
The inciting incident is banal: The scientist/husband leaves for a conference. Or does he? He simply disappears into the DAU universe’s other rooms, abandoning Katya to her demons. DAU. Katya Tanya
For three reels, the film becomes a horrifyingly authentic loop:
The "action" occurs when Katya invites a strange man from the street into the apartment to have sex while Tanya sits in the kitchen. Later, in a fit of jealous rage over a phantom lover, Katya destroys the apartment’s interior, uproots a flowerpot, and smears the dirt on her face. The climax is not a scream but a whisper: Katya, exhausted and broken, crawls into Tanya’s narrow bed and asks Tanya to tell her a fairy tale. Tanya complies, stroking Katya’s hair. The fairy tale is about a little girl who was lost and never found.
DAU. Katya Tanya is not entertainment. It is a stress test of the viewer’s morality.
Regardless of where you stand, the film lingers. Days after watching, you will not remember a plot point; you will remember the specific, exhausted way Tanya exhales when she hears Katya’s key in the lock. You will remember that love, when stripped of mutual respect, looks exactly like a prison cell. The "action" occurs when Katya invites a strange
Rating: ★★★½ (Artistic ambition, moral complexity)
Warning: Contains pervasive psychological abuse, coercive control, and non-simulated emotional distress.
In the oppressive, hyperreal universe of Ilya Khrzhanovsky’s DAU, individuality is a luxury, and intimacy is often a transaction. Amidst the claustrophobic corridors of a secret Soviet institute, two female figures—Katya and Tanya—emerge not merely as characters but as emotional barometers for the system’s decay. While the project is vast and often deliberately inscrutable, the relationship between these two women reveals the central tension of the DAU experiment: the struggle between performance and authenticity, complicity and rebellion.
Katya, often perceived as the more pragmatic and grounded of the pair, exists within the institute’s ecosystem as both a caretaker and a prisoner of its logic. She navigates the absurdities of Soviet scientific life with a weary, bureaucratic resignation. Tanya, in contrast, embodies raw, unfiltered emotion—jealousy, desire, and a desperate need for connection. Their interactions are rarely sentimental. Instead, they circle each other like magnets with reversed polarity: sometimes drawn together by shared isolation, more often repelled by the inherent competitiveness that the patriarchal, surveillance-state environment forces upon women.
The power of their dynamic lies in what is not said. In the long, unbroken takes characteristic of Khrzhanovsky’s direction, Katya and Tanya communicate through silence, averted gazes, and the careful choreography of domestic space. A shared cigarette or the act of pouring tea becomes a battlefield of subtle dominance and unspoken need. This is not a friendship in the traditional cinematic sense; it is a fragile alliance forged in the shadow of constant observation. Every tender moment is undercut by the knowledge that someone—a male scientist, a KGB informant, or the camera itself—is watching. Regardless of where you stand, the film lingers
Critically, the DAU project blurs the line between script and reality. The actresses (Radmila Shchegoleva as Katya and Marina Kleshcheva as Tanya) lived within their roles for years. Thus, the on-screen tension between Katya and Tanya feels painfully authentic: it is the friction of two souls trying to retain humanity while their environment demands they become cogs. Their conflicts—over a man, over a moral compromise, over a scrap of dignity—are microcosms of the larger Soviet tragedy. The system does not need to break them physically; it merely needs to ensure they never fully trust one another.
Ultimately, Katya and Tanya serve as a fractured mirror reflecting the audience’s own discomfort. We watch them, much like the institute’s scientists watch their subjects, seeking a coherent narrative or a moral escape. But DAU denies us closure. The women do not ride off into the sunset or stage a heroic rebellion. Instead, they endure. They adjust. They betray one another slightly, then pull back. In this liminal space of half-measures and quiet desperation, Khrzhanovsky finds his most devastating thesis: under total observation, even the deepest bonds become another performance. Katya and Tanya are not heroines or victims. They are survivors—and in the world of DAU, that is the most haunting role of all.
What makes Katya Tanya distinct from a standard domestic drama is the meta-context of the DAU production itself. Reports of psychological manipulation on set—actors not allowed to leave character, real emotional and physical distress—echo the film’s content.
Critics have argued that Khrzhanovsky isn’t exposing cruelty; he is orchestrating it. Watching Katya Tanya, you cannot shake the feeling that the actors’ pain is authentic. When Katya slaps Tanya, or forces her to undress, or manipulates her into staying, are we watching a performance, or are we complicit in documented abuse?