On the prestigious Tabakalera stage in San Sebastián, a Russian film student from Stockholm stands talking about his new film — on one hand about his love for Call Me By Your Name, on the other about the challenges of the shoot, and the consideration he must keep taking so as not to endanger his film team's situation.

The setting is the Basque film festival, in late September, and the director in question is Alexander Belov. In the audience, among others, sits Jonas Trueba as a jury member, and among the many students and directors the mood is reverent after Belov screened That Summer I Got Accepted to University, made as part of his education at Stockholm University of the Arts (SKH).

We see — or hear — nothing of the university here, but it's summer, noticeably hot. Two male beings in adolescence. Air rifles and tin cans. A cat wandering by, suddenly shot. Older generations reproaching the young — or simply neglecting them. Running through the whole half-hour film like a red thread — the inability to communicate.

POV got a moment to talk with the director after the screening.

How autobiographical is the film — if at all?
When I was 16 I was at that turning point when you apply to university. That's when childhood really ends and many of life's first "coordinates" start to come loose. I was living in Russia and spent that summer with a friend. The events in the film — the violence against the animal, the father figure — are drawn from my memories of that summer. It's not pure autobiography, of course; I'm looking at the past from a distance, through an artistic filter. But I still remember my friend shooting a cat right in front of me, and that memory has stayed with me for years. That's where the work on the script began.

How important is it that they're just teenagers who struggle to communicate, in relation to the sense that there's also a possible attraction between Anton and Zhenya?
I'm glad the audience picks up on that dimension in the film — a layer of intimacy between the boys, maybe even a forbidden one. I'm glad their inability to reach each other can be read as suppressed feelings — feelings that, in a masculine, patriarchal Russian society, are forbidden and have to be smothered. For me, that can be one of the keys to violence. At the same time, I also wanted to point to a more general problem: people's inability to communicate at all, especially men's.

How do you see their behaviour in relation to older generations' neglect?
I believe violence and neglect are inherited. Often it's a generational trauma passed down from parent to child. The grandmother hit the mother, the mother hits the son, the son maybe won't hit his own child — thanks to how society has developed — but he'll exercise psychological violence instead. It was important to me to convey that these boys aren't just "cruel teenagers," but that what they carry has roots in earlier generations.

At the premiere [in San Sebastián] you talked about censorship and about considerations you were forced to make to get the film made. What considerations?
I shot the film in Russia — because even though I live in Sweden, it's important to me to keep working, or at least try to work, and keep a connection to my home country. In Russian cinemas it's forbidden to show "child-free ideology," homosexual relationships, an absence of "traditional values," lack of respect for authority — and much more. Many directors make their short films knowing they can never be shown in Russia. Others develop a kind of Aesopian language — metaphors and omissions, where the "elephant in the room" is visible to everyone but never named. When you film in Russia, you always have this in the back of your mind.

The father's role is played by an actor whose career in Russia has suffered badly because of his views. He's barely seen on film anymore, and his opportunities to work are severely limited. Giving him the lead role was a deliberate choice. Viewers in Russia who recognise his name often understand the subtext without anything needing to be said outright. Under censorship, small details like that can become the most powerful statements.

You mix cinematic modes — sometimes wordless, where the images and camera carry everything, other times with a pregnant voice-over, especially at the end. How would you describe your style?
I just tried to make the film as good as possible. When I needed silence, I used silence. At the end I wanted to create maximum poetic intensity, so I used a poem by a Russian underground poet. My cinematographer and I spent a lot of time thinking about how the camera should "behave" — how it should move through the images like a kind of wandering memory.

You mentioned inspiration from Aleksei German Jr., and it's hard not to also see influences from Tarkovsky in the images. How important is it for you, as a filmmaker, to watch and rewatch films?
I was actually referring to Aleksei German Sr., especially his films My Friend Ivan Lapshin and Khrustalyov, My Car! I find it fascinating that people see Tarkovsky in my film, even though I wasn't thinking of him myself. Maybe it's my cinematographer Maxim who carries that legacy — Tarkovsky is his favourite director. Watching films, and rewatching them, is one of my most important tools as a filmmaker. It's like a muscle: it has to be kept working all the time. You have to keep watching films, continuously.

You're a Russian citizen but have half a year left on the directing programme at SKH in Stockholm — how did you end up in Sweden?
I appreciate the Scandinavian teaching model. I like the open, welcoming atmosphere at SKH, the absence of toxic criticism, and the opposite of the Eastern European principle of "drowning" the author and seeing who survives. That's still how much of Eastern Europe teaches, and certainly Russia. Another reason was that SKH offered an exciting programme in artistic research — not just pure filmmaking, which I already had, but the chance to deepen and understand my artistic practice on another level.

What are your ambitions now?
I want to make my first feature film. But right now I'm cut off, both mentally and physically, from my country. I still don't know what I've gained or lost through emigration. I don't know where I'll shoot my next film, or what it will be about. I feel the road ahead will be hard — I have to rebuild myself as a filmmaker and build a new team from scratch. I hope I can manage it.

— Interview by Jon Asp

Unofficial English translation of the original Swedish interview, published in POV / TriArt Film, December 2025.