Nastia Tarasova
Born in 1979, in Polevskoy (Russia, Sverdlovsk Region). From 1996 to 2001 she studied journalism at the Ural State University “Maxim Gorky”. In 2006 she graduated in Directing at the Russian State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK). Since 2004 she has been working with various studios, making documentaries. She directed the short films MARCHING IN THE WAR (SHAGNUVSHIE V VOINU, 2004), THE OLD DACHA (STARAYA DACHA, 2005), THE LIGHT OF THE WHITE SEA (SVET BELOGO MORYA, 2005), CHILDREN OF THE GREAT LAKE (DETI VELIKOGO OZERA, 2006), NO BORDERS (BEZ GRANIC, 2007), FAITHFUL (VERNAYA, 2008), UNEMPLOYED (BEZROBOTNI, 2009). In 2008 she founded the Albatross Film Studio. LINAR is her first feature film.
Director’s statement
“Today, the medical service in Russia is experiencing numerous problems. Some of them are discussed in the media, while others receive no coverage at all. Very often doctors, patients, and their relatives are the only people who know the truth. One of the most important and publicly undisclosed medical problems in Russia is transplantation in children. In Russia, transplanting organs from one child to another has been prohibited since 1993. The law states that only a person of full legal age can be a donor. Taking organs from children, even with parental consent, is persecuted by law. It is absolutely impossible to certify the death of a child's brain and then transplant the organs. In Russia, 5,000 patients need transplants every year, 30% of them being children. The majority of these children die. Medical specialists claim that transplanting an adult's liver to a child is safe as long as it is done correctly. The heart, however, can only be transplanted from another child. When child transplantation will become possible in Russia is unknown. The specialists we have consulted while researching this topic list a number of obstacles on the way of this process. One of them is the shortage of high-precision equipment that can certify the donor's death. Another danger is the increase in corruption. In the worst case scenario lifting a ban on child transplantation may trigger crimes of kidnapping for organs. The system has to be perfectly thought out before it can actually be implemented. Unfortunately, the word "perfectly" is rarely applicable to what our medical service does. In addition, the parents' consent is absolutely necessary for using their child's organs as transplants. Our society is in no way ready for that. No one would sign a paper that would allow taking organs from their child after his or her death. We are convinced that it is time to attract viewers' attention to this issue. We are very willing to get things moving, and we feel that our efforts will not be in vain. Not so long ago we were not aware of this major problem in our country. Up until a time when a surgeon, who performed the first surgery on Linar in Moscow, showed us a picture of this boy. In this picture Linar was walking along a park lane and pushing a giant wheeled pump in front of him. After that we literally got obsessed with this story”.
