The Cake
film by Adriana Denkova

script writer and director ADRIANA DENKOVA script editor NATALIA EGOROVA dop DENIS NOKHRIN production designer ANNA MOLKANOVA in roles ADRIANA DENKOVA ALEXEY GUBKIN producer ADRIANA DENKOVA co-producer IGOR AFRIKYAN executive producer SVETLANA PERVUSHINA 1st AD ARINA BOGATENKOVA 2nd AD SERGEI SHESTAKOV Sound engineer on set NIKOLAY OSIPOV gaffer
BOGDAN ZYKOV film editor IGOR AFRIKYAN DENIS NOHRIN ADRIANA DENKOVA Color correction
NIKOLAY LEDENEV post-production sound engineer IVAN NIKITIN IGOR AFRIKYAN costume designer
ANNA MOLKANOVA KSENIA MINOCHKINA makeup artist DARYANA SOKOTNYUK cake by POLINA ALEKSEEVA “POLYA PECHET” POLYAPECHET soundtrack Demons by Piotr Hummel is licensed under a Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License translation MARIA STEINBERG NELLY CASENOVA ROZALES special thanks ART STUDIO MOLK

Cake is the biggest dream of her life. One day He gives her that dream. But is it all so smooth sailing when the relationship is icing on the cake?


She has dreamed of Cake all her life. One day He fulfills that dream for her. She immediately takes to eating the Cake, but she is in for a surprise. The young man tries to assure her that perhaps “this is the best thing about Cake ever”, but will she agree?

An absurdist comedy about a couple's relationship.

I decided to make this film when I realized that I was tired of making compromises for the sake of my illusions and dreams that I was holding on to. In any case, this was the impetus for an image that I then tried to realize through the plot.

As for the form - it was important for me to distance myself from the triviality of storytelling and to convey its essence through the metaphorical nature of the image. I use a 1:1 frame, thus creating a tight frame, a limitation in which the protagonists find themselves trapped and in which they feel hopeless.
I add a slight grotesque to the play, emphasizing the absurdity of the same situations and the fixation of the same reactions to them. Thus, the movie turned out to be a black comedy, with elements of absurdity and even with notes of tragedy in the finale.

Perhaps the movie turned out to be about something else, and I would be interested to know who has what meanings during and after watching it. After all, we all watch movies about ourselves.
But what I myself also think is that what seems “good” to one person may not be so for another. And it may come out of the blue, a conflict of worldviews. That egoism prevents us from seeing things as they really are, or maybe they are always only as we see and interpret them.
"This is my first short film and at the same time my experiment. I didn't write a script specifically for it. That's when my boyfriend left me and I started having panic attacks. And they never left me. As I lived through those days, it was as if I was watching a film about myself. In other words, I had no influence to the state I was immersed in, but at the same time I could see myself from the outside.
The sequence of events and my reactions to them are filmed in the film. I can say with certainty that the film is based on real events, but there is no plot in it. The aim was rather to look at myself from the outside and rethink my own patterns."


written and directed by AADRIANA DENKOVA cinematographer NIKAS KOTIC starring ADRIANA DENKOVA RASHID AITOUGANOV ALEXANDRA POLONIK EKATERINA DAR sound engineer SERGEY SARACH editor IGOR AFRIKYAN ADRIANA DENKOVA second director YULIYA STUPENEVA backstage KSENIYA TIMOFEEVA music ILLAYALY