Artist: Natalia Mirzoyan
Curator: Santa Zukker
The exhibition “Winter Accompanies Us” is inspired by the short animated film “Winter in March”, created at the Estonian Academy of Arts and produced by the film studio Rebel Frame. The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2025 and has since received nearly twenty international awards at animation and film festivals around the world. It also received the Estonian Cultural Endowment’s annual award for Best Animated Film of 2025.
The exhibition expands the poetic and political world created in the film, exploring the helplessness and existential fear experienced by people living under a repressive regime. The film tells the true story of a young couple from St. Petersburg, Kirill and Dasha. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine shakes their lives. Dasha finds the strength to protest, while Kirill withdraws into himself, sinking deeper and deeper into depression. They decide to leave their homeland and set out for Georgia.
The journey is metaphysical – the train travels along the Russian-Ukrainian border, where the landscape outside the window is charged with symbols of war. Meanwhile, the fellow passengers behave as if nothing is happening. Through snowstorms and fear, the journey reaches its most painful moment at the border: will they be allowed to continue? Although they eventually reach Georgia, their greatest fear catches up with them in another way – from an unexpected place.
The exhibition invites visitors to immerse themselves in this world of imagery and emotional associations. The exhibition space is conceived as a journey, leading the viewer from intimate fragments of memory into a broader political and poetic dimension. The aim is to create an immersive experience that brings the film and exhibition together as a unified whole, while allowing the audience to encounter the personal and collective experiences of war, repression, and migration. In doing so, the exhibition opens a space for reflection and discussion on democracy, memory, and resistance.
Natalia Mirzoyan is an animation director and artist from Yerevan, Armenia, based in Estonia. She holds a Master’s degree in Animation from the Estonian Academy of Arts. Her films have been selected and awarded at major international festivals, including Berlinale, Cannes, Annecy, Animafest Zagreb, and Hiroshima. Natalia works across hand-drawn animation, stop-motion, illustration, and sketching.
Santa Zukker is actively engaged in curatorial work. Her curatorial practice focuses primarily on supporting emerging and young artists and fostering dialogue across different artistic disciplines. With a background in art history and a Master’s degree in Museology from the Estonian Academy of Arts, she combines the conceptual development and presentation of exhibitions with regular in-depth exhibition reviews and cultural recommendations for the cultural platform Edasi.org and other publications.
Artist Team: Rebecca Kruus, Alexander Toodu, Kadi Rebane, Annaliisa Lepik, Katrina Oll, Marina Hirv, Dashka Dementeva, Saskia Sikk
Exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.
