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IFF Message to Man > 2026 > Special Screenings > Rare

Rare

Information about the film

Genres: Documentary, Full-length

Director: Ksenia Sadovski, Roman Travaye

Producer: Anastasia Belskaya, Maria Vitkina, Arseniy Popov, Elina Muratova

Year: 2026

Country: Russia

Duration: 1 h. 30 min.

Languages: Russian

Description

Documentary stories of children in a stage production, told not with pity or melodrama but through beauty and the superpower of children with rare diseases. Illness is spoken of through the lens of rarity itself: in life, in nature, and in a person. The film is conceived as a backstage record of the making of a play called Rare. The main characters are on stage; in the auditorium and at rehearsals are those who watch and guide them in real life — leading Russian geneticists, doctors specialising in rare diseases, and parents.

About the directors:

Ksenia Sadovski

Filmmaker, screenwriter, playwright, and poet. She graduated from the Faculty of Journalism at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, and later, in France, from the theatre school CoursFlorent and the Conservatoire National Supérieur d’Art Dramatique. She has written screenplays for several short films. She is the author and director of the multi-format production I Don’t Play with Dolls Anymore at the Obraztsov Puppet Theatre.

Roman Travaye

Filmmaker. He studied at the EICAR film school in Paris. He has lived in Russia for more than 15 years, making music videos and commercials. Director of the documentaries MoskoBeat and Radio: On the First Wave, and of the series Period of Flight. His daughter lives with a rare genetic condition and is one of the central figures in Rare.

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