Lucille Khadzhikhalilovich does not make horror films in the traditional sense, although her neo -atrous film about a bodybie Earwig It may come close. But for now Ice Tower Not the horror of the body, it can still be one of the most terrible films of 2025. Fans of David Lynch and Alfred Hitchcock should go to Gaga – and not only from her terrible bird attack. (Although this element does not hurt.)
The delicate touch of Hadjikhalilovich does Ice Tower Play as a fairy tale: a 15-year-old girl named Ginn, who is played by the newcomer Clara Pachini, runs away from her shelter and misses the film, where the rethinking of Hans Christian Andersen Snow Queen Shot. There she meets Christina (InfusionMarion Cotyllard), who depicts the ice queen in the center of the history of Andersen. Behind the scenes, the movie star radiates cruelty and charm equally, the jann cannot look away from Christina. What turns around when an orphan descends into the unreality of movement is a hypnotic story about adulthood.
Many directors who are trying to reach the tone with the dream of lincian, have a tendency excessively individually or turn their films into mysterious boxes. Hadjikhalilovich had a simpler approach: to ride “the face between reality and fantasy”, returning to Andersen's original material, in the literal and figurative sense. At the beginning of the film, Jeanne reads its story a young orphan, creating an otherworldly atmosphere. When Jeanne will be released about the Snow Queen, Khadgikhalilovich says that she gave her “a way to escape, build a world, a universe with her own reality and rules.”
This universe, c Ice TowerIt is intentionally unrealistic. “We were much more excited, removing artificiality […] Fake snow, and not real snow and fake mountains drawn in the background, ”explains Khadzhikhalilovich. The art of the film becomes strange; There are times when you could be mistaken Ice Tower For a sandy rome FrozenThe field (and yet, no, she did not see the Disney film.)
Jeanne’s primary journey – a girl running home, and going through the portal to another world – adds the aura of the film about fantastic horror. Ice Tower Combine well with Labyrinth panWith Cotillaond, filling Guillermo del ToroLiteral monsters. Hajikhalilovich wanted Jeanne to see the “Snow Queen in the Certain”, and then “little is still becoming more and more involved in this shooting until it is inside the story itself.”
This gives the film a sense of dream logic, a rhythmic sensation, which, according to Khadjikhalilovich, requires great caution when it comes not only about the magnificent visual effects of the film, but also for the soundtrack. “We tried to make it very expressive and emotional, with not too many elements – we simply removed a lot of things, not only in the image, but also a lot in the sound,” she says.
Cotyllard, who first worked with Hadjikhalilovich two decades ago on InnocenceChannels of the same style of painted. “I think that she intuitively remembered how I would like the actors to play in such a planned or very restrained performance,” says Khadzhikhalilovich. Pacini, on the contrary, brings vulnerability with widely open eyes to Jeanne's pushing relations with Christina. Magnetism ends with the fact that Hadjikhalilovich calls a “big kiss”, grotesque, opera that she bothered, can fall. “I thought Maybe this will not workshe admits. But, seeing him on the set, made her feel how the moment was magical: “”Wow, something is in this.“
Ice Tower not direct adaptation Snow QueenBut Khadzhikhalilovich was in the direction of the fairy -tale work of Andersen, which she calls “very dark, very cruel and very cruel.” She also breaks him with reality, eroding the moments of grounding severe reality throughout the script. By the end, a lot remained unproven. The director teases that Jeanne can even “invent a film in the film”, a subtle assumption that everything on the screen can be a hallucination.
Khadzhikhalilovich lives for complications. Her heroes are more dirty than under Andersen. More put on the card. They are solid, but psychologically complex. And yet, inverting traditional fantasy stories, Hadjikhalilovich hoped to become even closer to what Andersen did in due time: to abandon the anchor of logic.
“[The Ice Tower] This is completely unrealistic, ”she says with a crooked smile. But this is seductive, unusual and absolutely frightening.
Ice Tower Open in selected cinemas on October 3.
