So, I looked back at the submission information for The Three Sisters in the OIAF database. It was submitted in 2024, and the director was listed as Timur Kognov, along with a photo and biography:<\/p>\n
He was born on April 19, 1969, in Georgia. He also graduated from art school there. In 1997, he graduated from the directing courses at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Israel. After that, he actively worked as a storyboard artist and director of episodes in the field of commercial animation, on TV series and feature films. In collaboration with the independent studio Polidont has created several original films that participated in various film festivals. He currently lives in Haifa, Israel, where he continues his professional career.<\/p>\n
On the Film Freeway site, the biography was a bit different:<\/p>\n
He was born on April 19, 1969 in Georgia. He also graduated from art school there. In 1997, he graduated from the directing courses at Film school in Tbilisi. After that, he actively worked as a storyboard artist and director of episodes in the field of commercial animation, on TV series and feature films. In collaboration with the independent studio Polidont has created several original films that participated in various film festivals. He currently lives in Canada in Toronto, where he continues his professional career.<\/p>\n
Initially, I was focused on the Cyprus\/Russia relationship. It was hard to see any connection to Cyprus at all. Even the credits are loaded with Russian names. My initial assumption was simple: this was a case of Russians hiding behind another country, a wolf in sheepskin.<\/p>\n
But\u2026 then it was revealed that former Oscar nominee, Konstantin Bronzit (Switchcraft, At the ends of the Earth, We Can\u2019t Live Without Cosmos), was actually the director, nd that this had been a long-running plan, a \u201csocial experiment,\u201d as he called it.<\/p>\n
Artists using pseudonyms is nothing new. There are endless examples of writers and artists creating under different names for various reasons, yet in all my years in animation\u2026 well, I\u2019ve seen some shit, but this was a new one.<\/p>\n
Rather than continue pondering the various motives behind this, I decided to reach out directly to Bronzit to find out just what the hell he was up to.<\/p>\n
How far back does this idea go? Was there a specific incident that made you want to do this \u2018social experiment\u2019?<\/p>\n
![\"Konstantin](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Konstantin-Broznit.jpg\")
Konstantin Broznit<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not fond of the word \u201cexperiment,\u201d though I may have been the first to use it. It\u2019s a test. A test of my own creative abilities.\u00a0 But as it turns out, when you test yourself, you end up testing the system too. The idea came to me 12 years ago, when I was finishing We Can\u2019t Live Without Cosmos. Unfortunately, when I started making the second film, He Can\u2019t Live Without Cosmos, a few years later, I had to put this idea on the back burner, since these two films are too closely intertwined. I needed to wait for a project that would be totally different. That turned out to be The Three Sisters.<\/p>\n
But there\u2019s also a backstory. Many years ago, a great director told me personally of a case at a festival \u2013 it could have been in Varna, or maybe somewhere else \u2013 when another famous director sat on the festival jury and sank his film. Obviously, that jury member naively assumed the filmmaker would never find out. I could have questioned this story, since after all, it was told from the perspective of someone who\u2019d been wronged. But years passed, and that same jury member sank my film, too, at another festival. And after that, I heard about such cases many more times from other filmmakers, at other festivals, about other films.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been in this profession a long time and have seen a lot \u2013 as a competitor, as a selection committee member, and as a jury member.\u00a0 I\u2019m talking about things we can\u2019t change.\u00a0 They\u2019re an unavoidable fact of life. But one day I thought: what if a jury member knew nothing about the film except the film itself? Could I overcome any barriers sheerly by virtue of the qualities of the film itself? I decided to find out.<\/p>\n
\u00a0Is this Timur person real?<\/p>\n
He is, partly. He\u2019s a relative of mine. And yes, he\u2019s actually Georgian, I didn\u2019t make that up. I just changed his last name a little. He has nothing to do with cinema. Pretty much everything in my \u201ccover story\u201d is based on truth.\u00a0 As a director, I pay close attention to details. You can see it in The Three Sisters. I thought the whole thing through very carefully, down to the smallest details. But I also knew that The Three Sisters couldn\u2019t be Timur Kognov\u2019s debut, that would have been terribly unfair to all the other filmmakers.\u00a0 So I gave him a filmography. And it\u2019s also loosely based on the truth. I didn\u2019t put Citizen Kane or Zootopia on the list in order to not raise suspicions, but the films there are real, ones that I made as academic exercises and were seen only by my students. So it wasn\u2019t just making a film anymore; I was directing a piece of my own life.\u00a0 And that\u2019s way more fun than cinema!<\/p>\n
Why did you decide on Cyprus?<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re making things up anyway, why not? But Cyprus is also a partial truth. There\u2019s a distribution company there, and also many good freelance animators. It would have worked just as well to write \u201cCanada,\u201d and that would have been equally true, because my friends in Canada helped me out with the film. Actually, I should have.<\/p>\n
In this sense, as a film academy member, I\u2019m genuinely glad, even proud, that the Academy simply watches films, without making footnotes about names, let alone the country of origin.\u00a0 The Academy is still about the art of cinema, not about something else.<\/p>\n
How was this film funded? <\/p>\n
The money situation with The Three Sisters is as simple as it gets. Precisely because of my desire to release the film under a pseudonym, there was no way to get state funding.\u00a0 The system of financing we have is extremely transparent. The film is submitted for review, followed by an official pitch that is broadcast online, where everyone can view it. Afterwards, they announce to the world which director got money and for which film. So there was no way for this to work with my idea \u2013 the whole animation community would have immediately found out that Bronzit is making a new film called The Three Sisters. Then a private studio appeared on my horizon.<\/p>\n
It seems you submitted the film to the Academy with your real name on it. Why did you decide to finally include your real name?<\/p>\n
Because that was the plan from the very start. Because what\u2019s interesting is taking a risk with the trickiest part, which is the festival selection process. The Academy website screening room, where the films are available for viewing, has a great setup. Film previews do not show the country of origin and director names. All you see is the film\u2019s title and length. To view the director\u2019s name, you need to at least start viewing the film.<\/p>\n
International festivals let a director submit their film in just a few clicks with not a lot of paperwork involved, and a huge thank-you to the festivals for that! The processes are very strict at the Academy, like at any large and longstanding entity, and there are rules for everything. I had not the foggiest idea of how I would get myself out of that situation later on a sheer technical level. Why make things more complicated for myself?<\/p>\n
What did this experiment prove in the end? Was it that Timur\u2019s film wasn\u2019t loved by festivals, but the moment Konstantin\u2019s name was added, the Academy immediately loved it?<\/p>\n
That is the main question.<\/p>\n
Very few films make it to the competition stage at major international festivals.\u00a0 Sometimes this number is 80, but often it is just 12 to 15! And there can be up to 5,000 submissions. That\u2019s more than 300 films for every slot! I\u2019ve been on selection committees plenty of times. Even just physically, it\u2019s hard to view everything with 100 percent of your attention!<\/p>\n
One more important thing. Despite numerous rejections, my film still managed to make it into about two dozen festivals. And imagine that \u2013 at half of them, it received very significant prizes. Even the Audience prize at one of them. Which is incredibly pleasant, since at the same festival many years back, my film We Can\u2019t Live Without Cosmos also won the Audience prize. When a film gets prizes at every other festival, that means that the film isn\u2019t a lost cause!<\/p>\n
But then we have to make the clear and obvious conclusion that today, the hardest part about festivals for a film isn\u2019t even getting a prize, it\u2019s getting into the competition at all!<\/p>\n
This was a discovery for me. And with all the AI and accelerated content creation going on, the situation will only get worse. Neither the festivals nor the directors are to blame for that. But that will be the flow of things.<\/p>\n
Now imagine selecting from this flow, and before you is a film by Yuri Norstein, Miyazaki, or someone else (put whoever you personally happen to prefer). The attention of the people making the selection is heightened and focused. That\u2019s completely normal. Honestly, I can\u2019t even imagine how else it could be! Is that person doing something criminal? Of course not! It\u2019s NOT their fault, and it might not even affect whether the film ultimately makes the cut. Our brain is simply reacting to the directors we love or don\u2019t love. Films from less-famous directors will also get watched, but with different eyes, so to speak, in energy-saving mode. For them, getting selected is like winning the lottery. I understood all this perfectly and consciously decided to put my film through this gauntlet. And I know I can now go to my many fellow directors, who have for whatever reason not yet earned themselves a name, and tell them, brothers and sisters, don\u2019t despair when you regularly have to open letters informing you that your film has been rejected, again, from some festival\u2019s competition! I purposefully became a nobody, walked a mile in your shoes, and used a simple little test to show that these rejections aren\u2019t always a sign that something is wrong with your film. Don\u2019t give up, and if you truly love animation or short-form live action, just keep working at it. If your film is worthwhile, you always have a chance to get noticed. That is what my test showed. It offers hope to many directors. That\u2019s the takeaway!<\/p>\n
Do you really think animation festivals behave this way? As I said, I can\u2019t speak for other festivals, but in Ottawa, we\u2019ve sometimes accepted Bronzit films, sometimes haven\u2019t accepted them. Names in the credits don\u2019t really matter to me.<\/p>\n
I know this about you, Chris, and respect your approach very much. But it\u2019s not about you personally. I\u2019m sure that most festivals, too, are also run honestly and selflessly, which is commendable. To make my point clear, I\u2019ll run the risk of simplifying.<\/p>\n
In one Facebook discussion on this topic, one director whom I\u2019ll call N had been selecting films for the competition at a festival, and she wrote something to the effect of: \u201cI\u2019ve blocked this film. It\u2019s old-fashioned\u2026\u201d Bingo! That\u2019s precisely what I was going for. Pure, uninhibited objectivity. There\u2019s some no-name auteur \u2013 and director N, who is simply watching that person\u2019s film. That is the ideal. But if she had known it was a Bronzit film, her perception would not have been unclouded. It would have created bias. The content of her comment is beside the point, but in that case, we could then judge her to the effect that director N just can\u2019t stand Bronzit personally. Or if she wrote something nice, then the opposite. But now we definitely know that she was sharing her honest view of the film, and not something else.<\/p>\n
Additional information would change our perception. When someone is just watching a film, it doesn\u2019t matter at all. But if this person is judging it, then ideally they shouldn\u2019t know anything about it! The film\u2019s success then depends entirely on the actual quality of the film itself, and not things external to it!<\/p>\n
Set aside the whole selection process. Things are very different with jury members. The problem is we don\u2019t control our own minds. We depend on our mind, and not vice versa, contrary to widespread opinion. This is easy to prove \u2013 close your eyes and try to not think of anything for one minute. Just one minute! You won\u2019t make it even ten seconds. Your head will be filled with so many random disconnected thoughts that you can\u2019t get rid of, unless you\u2019re the Buddha, of course. After that, how can you think that we control our own minds? So, try to imagine some juror who is watching a competition film. If they don\u2019t know anything about the director, they just watch the movie. But if this director has owed a lot of money to this juror for a long time and doesn\u2019t want to pay up, the head of this juror will be clouded\u2026 This is simple psychology, and it\u2019s not something any of us control.<\/p>\n
Also, debts should be paid. Especially before New Year\u2019s!<\/p>\n
Did you consider the timing of this? There are people \u2013 including me \u2013 who felt that maybe this was a Russian animator trying to sneak into a festival\/awards in disguise. It\u2019s a pretty sensitive time right now, and many people might think this was your motivation.<\/p>\n
Chris, we know that if that had been my goal, it would have been enough to just change the production country and leave my name the same. And there are numerous examples of this.<\/p>\n
In different times, the two of us could just sit down together, sip some wine, and have a good laugh at my little caper. You know what\u2019s the funniest gag in my film At the Ends of the Earth? When the poor cat is squashed by the house. I know this because I\u2019ve heard, dozens of times, how people laugh the hardest precisely at that moment. But it\u2019s a dumb gag. What makes it so funny? The answer\u2019s simple: context. Filmmaking is different from lifemaking because a director can shape the context, which you can\u2019t do in real life. You can shape only your own selection, but not the world context.<\/p>\n
My problem is that it takes me a very long time to make a film. After starting the film in 2018, I finished it only in 2024. I look out the window, and it\u2019s still winter in March out there\u2026 and I\u2019m already 60. Considering how long I take to bring about films, it might be my last one. The context that has been so unfortunate for all of us is not going to change in my lifetime. So I don\u2019t have any time to lose, and I\u2019m hurrying to do something useful. I knew I\u2019d be sticking my neck out, and there would be some pushback, but I had no choice. So my scheme did not turn out quite as beautifully as it could have, which is a shame. My timing inside my films is much better, so at least there is that.<\/p>\n
Do you worry now that maybe festivals will feel tricked and might not even consider your films anymore? Maybe you will have to keep using fake names?!<\/p>\n
You\u2019re going to hunt for my name in the credits now every time? With questions like that, I kinda feel like I\u2019m the defendant taking the stand. And now it\u2019s time for the sentence to be pronounced. Just a week ago, in my interview for Animation Magazine, I was saying: judge the film, not its author!<\/p>\n
Which was, to my joy, the case at the Santa Barbara festival, where my film qualified. The jurors and those making the selection didn\u2019t care whether this film was by Kognov or Bronzit. I think they didn\u2019t know either of those names; it\u2019s a rather large festival that covers more than just animation. They watched the film, and they liked it. There was nothing more to it. It\u2019s the most honestly earned prize that I\u2019ve won! And I extend my special thanks to Santa Barbara for that. I wave to them with gratitude! I wrote to them later to personally come clean.\u00a0 And you know what response I got? \u201cWhat an exciting twist, Konstantin, and what an interesting journey you and your film have been on this time around. Thank you for letting our festival be a part of it.\u201d I am so glad that they saw a little humor in what I did. This always makes us happy.<\/p>\n
To sum up, I\u2019m afraid you\u2019re confusing me with Don Quixote. I may be an idiot, but I\u2019m definitely not Don Quixote. I\u2019m more of an idiot, in the Dostoyevskian sense. An idealist, that is. I created the ideal situation for discussing cinema, and I get judged for that. Even though I know for a fact that I did not break any festival rules. My test isn\u2019t about you, or festivals, or anyone else; it\u2019s about me and seeing whether my personal creative powers are up to snuff. I put just my own film at risk, and nobody else\u2019s. I freed the judges from name recognition. It\u2019s the height of fair play, striving for objectivity. I don\u2019t know, maybe someone sees that as a crime, but for me it\u2018s exquisite. As in chess: a queen\u2019s sacrifice with unclear consequences. Do you like chess? I do!<\/p>\n
You mentioned being locked out, like I already have been for the last two years anyway. Here\u2019s my counterproposal. Let\u2019s have all festivals, from now on, accept submissions from directors totally incognito? It\u2019s hard to imagine a fairer situation from a competitive point of view! Plus, it exactly fits how you go about it yourself. Then you shouldn\u2019t have anything to worry about. I bet that many festivals might support the idea. And young directors might like it too. Art would win.<\/p>\n
You know, when we all live in dark times, we unwillingly start to look for enemies in every corner. But in doing so, we ourselves create more darkness. We end up aiding it. But how does that benefit us? Let\u2019s turn our efforts in the opposite direction, I say.<\/p>\n
This article focuses on the short film The Three Sisters, its festival submissions, and its promotion. That said, it\u2019s also part of a much larger story that has been in the headlines for almost three years now.<\/p>\n
For the sake of disclosure, it should be noted that Bronzit has established and recent ties to the Russian state, which Ukrainian media has criticized. The photo being shared by Ukrainian sources, embedded below, is from 2016, when Bronzit was awarded for contributions to cultural development.<\/p>\n